The Automated Goliath

by William F. Temple

  These vehicles carried an illuminated panel map of Central London. To reach any point, you juggled a moving light spot to settle on that point, pulled the start lever and off you went. You didn’t have to do a thing after that but sit back. The route was stored in the taxi’s memory. It made its own way and the radar scanner watched the traffic lights and kept it from hitting extraneous objects, human or insensate.

  For Outer London, you pressed the right studs and the required map section moved onto the panel.

  Cornwall wasn’t on the map, of course. Not that I’d choose to go by taxi, anyhow; I wanted the fastest route. I pressed a stud labeled London Airport, and the taxi took me there.

  The direct descendant of “George,” the automatic pilot of World War Two, flew me down to Cornwall. I chose a single-seater plane to be alone.

  The monorail train took me from Truro Airfield to Merthavin. It actually had a human driver; the full blessings of automation hadn’t reached the wilds of Cornwall. The other passengers exchanged cracks with the driver and called him “Bob.” I felt twenty years younger.

  I knew where Bill Brewster would be at this time of day. There were three public houses in Merthavin, and I located him in the second, the Piskie House. A piskie is a Cornish fairy.

  “Hello, piskie,” I said.

  Bill’s watery blue eyes sometimes looked thoughtful, sometimes blank, mostly just sad. They never showed alarm or surprise. He was too well-disciplined a soldier. He looked at me sadly.

  “What’s been keeping you, Junior? Madeleine, a pint of bitter for the foreigner.”

  To the Cornish, anyone not born in Cornwall is a foreigner.

  The cheerful young barmaid pushed a tankard of bitter across the bar to me. I sat down, sipping it.

  “Seems I’m destined always to be a month behind you, Bill.”

  “At least, Junior. D’you remember that time we—”

  By the fourth pint we were reliving battles long ago in the Western Desert, on the plain of Catania, at bloody Anzio, and cracking the Gothic Line again.

  “Life had a purpose then,” I said. “Anyhow, we thought so. How could we know that we were only fighting to hand the world over to Rossum’s Universal Robots?”

  “The shape of things to come was there in those days, but we didn’t see it. Remember those self-propelled, unmanned midget tanks the Krauts launched against us at Anzio?”

  I nodded. “They were packed with H.E.”

  “In more ways than one. The Krauts had a name for that type of robot tank. ‘Goliath.’ And now Goliath is overrunning the world, grinding all the little Davids into dust. General MacArthur was defeated by a species of Goliath.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Bill took a long pull, wiped his mouth, and said, “I’m talking about the Korean War now. History says MacArthur was relieved of command by President Truman. Not so. Goliath decided it. MacArthur’s policy risked world war. They shoveled statistics into a computer in Washington. It told them the answer. The American economy was in no position to face the risk of another world war at that moment. Ergo: MacArthur had to go. The computer said so.”

  “I never knew that. But I can believe it.”

  Bill nodded, and switched the topic. “Well, Junior, now you’re here, how are you going to pass the time?”

  “What do you do?”

  “Oh, I fish, garden, sail, read old war books, and—and—”

  “Drink beer.”

  Bill’s lips twitched. “Working is better than doing nothing, but drinking is better than either.”

  “You may be right,” I said, and sat reflecting.

  What was I to do? Nobody in this robot-coddled world had to work if they didn’t want to. Design engineers and inventors obviously wanted to. They seemed demonically driven to enmesh the world with automation. They cared little for money. Yet money for a few extra luxuries was largely the incentive for the other voluntary workers like maintenance engineers, doctors, midwives.

  And writers.

  In London I’d been writing TV plays for years. Why shouldn’t I have the larger TV set, the plushier carpets, the rare antiques that money could buy? Money was the only real response to my work. No one bothered to read much. TV was too easy. Printed journals were rare. Critical reviews of TV plays were rarer. Perhaps my plays weren’t so hot. To see a printed review of one was like seeing a snowflake in

  July-Once in a blue moon I’d meet someone who saw a play of mine. He might even recall what it was about. There were just too many channels. In the flood of stuff pouring through them, my creations stood out like drops in a river.

  Besides, I was getting hard up for themes. My line was the problem play. But where were the problems today? Automation had ironed out most of the social and human ones.

  No poverty, no insecurity, no wars, no politicians of the old school. A round century was the expected span of life. Old age wasn’t a tragedy and dramatic illnesses belonged to the past—you couldn’t write a modern Lady of the Camellias.

  A doctor couldn’t do anything more romantic than setting your broken leg.

  No problems, no heroes to overcome them.

  Yet I had a problem: what to do to feel that I was alive?

  Bill said, “You have to do your own shopping here. No processed, tasteless, packaged food sliding to you through conduits from Distribution Center.”

  “Good,” I said. Trains with drivers! Pubs with barmaids!

  “Some houses don’t even have TV.”

  “I’ll get one of those houses,” I said. To hell with TV, and the pseudo-historical romances which meant nothing, and the “modern” plays which were only tired tricks with the eternal triangle and meant less than nothing.

  “To Merthavin, and the hope of real civilization,” I said, and raised my tankard.

  Bill raised his, too, but not to Merthavin. He was saluting a newcomer to the bar, a slow-moving old chap, leathery and wrinkled, who’d obviously celebrated his own centenary years ago.

  “Hi, Cornelius, what’s the news?”

  “Buy the Messenger and find out,” grunted Cornelius.

  “I’d rather buy you a pint, you miserable old man,” Bill retorted, and did so.

  Cornelius, I discovered, was a character.

  He disliked most people and had found an ideal way of telling them so. He owned and edited a weekly local newspaper, the Merthavin Messenger. Such papers were rare these days. There certainly wasn’t another like this one.

  He had a copy with him and showed it to me. There must have been acid even in the printer’s ink. The news was all about local people, put viperishly.

  Sam Coates, of Pentagon Street, fell off his bicycle three times on his way home from The Piskie House on Thursday. But he wasn’t riding a bicycle. He only thought he was. Men who can’t hold their liquor should stick to weak tea.

  Elizabeth (Liza) Pettsworth, of Walsham Street corner (hours, 7 p.m. to midnight), is expecting again. So are Bill Foster, Tom Trelawney, and Simon Meek. Rumor has it that they will cut the cards to decide who will be the happy father.

  On Sunday, Percy Browne, of Loomis Cottage, beat his carpet, his wife, and it out of town.

  That sort of thing.

  “How many times a week are you sued, Cornelius?” I asked, handing it back.

  Cornelius just growled into his beer.

  “They never sue,” said Bill. “They love it. They lap it up. They’re flattered to see their name in print. It makes them feel they’re someone. In this world, that’s a rare feeling.”

  “I’m killing the Messenger,” said Cornelius, suddenly.

  “I’m getting too old for it. Anyhow, I’m tired of running a scandal sheet. It was a good paper. I ran some good stories. But nobody really wanted good stories—only dirty ones. Small towns are only interested in gossip. Nasty people. I hate everybody.”

  “Then confound you, Cornelius!” exclaimed Bill. “The Messenger is part of my life here. I’ll miss it like hell. Junior, I’
ve got an idea. You need an occupation. You’re a writer. You take over the Messenger.”

  “Me?” I was startled. “Sorry, it’s not my kind of thing. I want to settle down peacefully here. I don’t want to start by libeling the local folk, especially as I don’t know any of them.”

  “Don’t worry, Pam will dig out the dirt for you,” said Cornelius. “She’s been my right hand these last couple of years.”

  “Pam?”

  “My great-granddaughter.”

  “Hm.” I visualized a stringy, sharp-nosed, narrow-eyed malicious vixen. If I was fool enough to take over the paper, she’d go out on her neck.

  “Best story I ever ran,” said Cornelius, “was the Flying Saucer of Moble Island. The strangest thing—saw it with my own eyes. ‘Bout ten years ago. Big ball of white fire-like the sun itself—came down from nowhere, in broad daylight, settled on the island, seemed to sink right into it. I was out fishing that way, alone. Made for the island right away, walked all over it. Not a sign of anything out of the ordinary. Not even a twig burnt.”

  “You deserve another pint for that yarn,” said Bill. “Madeleine!”

  Cornelius scowled at him. “Nobody else believed me, either. They kidded the life out of me. But I’ve made ‘em squirm since. Don’t put your thumb in the beer, damn you, Madeleine.”

  I said, “It sounds more like some meteorological phenomenon—globe lightning, say, than a so-called Flying Saucer.”

  “What’s so-called ‘bout Flying Saucers?” growled Cornelius. “Everyone in these parts has seen ‘em. Seen three myself. But they’re not balls of fire, but solid flying machines.”

  “I saw one only last week,” said Bill casually. “Going over pretty high. What kind of new plane is it, Junior? I’m out of touch, I’m glad to say.”

  “I must be out of touch, too. I don’t know of any circular type planes. It’s hard to keep abreast of these times.”

  We got to talking about these times. In the end, I felt Cornelius and I were old friends and accepted his invitation to see the Messenger office.

  Everything was jammed in the one room. There stood an aged linotype, two desks, two chairs, many files, a typewriter, a visaphone, two dozen empty beer bottles—and Pam. Everything except Pam was pretty much what I’d expected to find.

  She was around twenty. Not stringy, but nicely rounded. Her eyes were round also, brown and innocent as a fawn’s. She was pretty and demure; her voice was soft, like a shy schoolgirl’s, when Cornelius introduced us. Her hair was long and raven-black.

  Cornelius said, “This pile of junk you see around you is the Messenger. Nine thousand the lot—that includes the bad will.”

  “Does it also include Pam?” I asked, with the brashness of the semi-intoxicated.

  “If you take her with it, the price is only eight thousand.”

  I laughed, but that seemed nasty, even for Cornelius.

  “You’re chiseling again, Cornelius,” said Pam in a voice like velvet. “I’m sure the London women are accustomed to pay far more than a thousand for the pleasure of Mr. Madden’s company.”

  “Tush, child, your claws are showing. What will Mr. Madden think?”

  I happened to be thinking that this must be how you feel if you’re suddenly stilettoed by some church mouse of a Sunday school teacher. Behind those sweet lips Cornelius’s inherited tongue lay in wait, ready to dart and strike.

  “I’ll take the lot,” I said, heavily. “Cat and all.”

  Pam gave me the loveliest smile I’ve ever seen. ” ‘Ban, *ban, Caliban has a new master,” she murmured.

  After which, we got along fine. For years. Things happened in those years, mostly not for the best. I got older, and Cornelius got so old he died.

  The Messenger had its ups and downs. Its ups when I gave Pam a free rein. Its downs when I mounted the editorial soapbox and campaigned. Mostly I campaigned against the ever more rapid encroachment by Goliath—as Bill and I now termed the system—from the east. His victims seemed to vanish overnight. Bob, the monotrain driver, was one. The monorail became automatic right to Land’s End.

  Automation took over the tin mines and the china clay pits. The clerical staff of the bank in Truro was replaced by an electronic brain. Merthavin’s bank was next on the list.

  I got het up about it, though none of my reluctant readers seemed to. Like Tom Smallways, they’d come to accept that this here Progress, it goes on. Even Bill seemed resigned at last, until one day he came striding into my office, thumped on my desk, and, red-faced, yelled, “It’s got to stop!”

  Chapter 5

  It turned out that the Piskie House had been automatized.

  “Madeleine’s gone—replaced by a battery of press buttons,” said Bill, furiously. “Dial Bit for bitter beer. How can you enjoy beer in a damn visaphone exchange? It’s got to stop.”

  “Did you see Gregory?” asked Pam. Gregory was the landlord.

  Bill nodded. “Not his fault. Some Government VIP called and read Section 23, sub-section 14 (a) of the Automation Act at him. All public houses to be automatized by the fifteenth of this month. The engineers worked all night. They’ve ruined our date for next Monday, Junior.”

  I frowned. That was the date we’d fixed under Eros forty years back. We’d settled for a binge in the Piskie House instead. We’d been refugees in the West Country for six years now.

  “I’ll write an editorial,” I said firmly.

  “Much good that’ll do,” snarled Bill. “I’m going to get my Luger and shoot this VIP right through the liver. Wonder where he is now?”

  “Here I am, sir,” said a cheerful voice from the doorway. We turned. There stood a good-looking young man. He was neatly dressed, smiling, and carrying what appeared to be a brief case. “Complete with liver,” he added. “The name is Arthur Coney, Assistant-Deputy Scientific Director for the West Region.”

  A silence.

  “He looks human,” said Pain. “Probably a robot, though.”

  Coney shook his head. “My liver is non-mechanical, I assure you. But please don’t shoot a hole through it. I’m only here to help you.”

  “In what way, exactly?” asked Bill, dangerously.

  Coney beamed at him. “Are you Mr. Madden?” Bill scowled, and indicated me.

  Coney transferred the beam to me. “I’ve come to automatize your newspaper.”

  “Like hell you will! And don’t bother to read sub-section 14 (a) at me, either.”

  “Sub-section 21 (e)—automatization of newspapers,” Coney corrected.

  “This newspaper is privately owned—by me,” I snapped.

  “The Government isn’t taking it from you, sir, only increasing its efficiency, cutting out superfluous staff—”

  “I have no superfluous staff.”

  “Thank you kindly, Mr. Editor,” murmured Pam.

  Coney was taking a look around. I’d made a few changes, but not many. The old typewriter had fallen apart and I’d got the latest electric model. The linotype had been even older and lousy with gremlins, and I’d replaced it. Sometimes when I wanted to dictate one of my crusading editorials, Pam wasn’t available to take it down. So I’d bought a tape recorder. That was about all.

  “Your equipment isn’t too bad, Mr. Madden,” remarked Coney.

  “Thanks,” I said, curtly.

  “But you don’t seem to have made the best use of it, sir.”

  The typewriter and tape recorder were both standing on my desk. Coney pushed them together, back to back. He fumbled a bit, then there was a click. Somehow, the two machines had snapped together and become one unit. He switched on, slipped paper into the typewriter, and began speaking into the recorder microphone.

  “As you see, these two units were designed to form another machine: a robot typist-secretary. My words become magnetic patterns on the tape, the tape passes under a magnetic pickup in the back of the typewriter, and the resulting electric impulses operate the relevant keys.”

  As fast as he was speaki
ng, the typewriter was tapping out the words on paper. The rest of us were bereft of speech. I’d wondered about certain catches and projections on the two machines, which seemed to serve no purpose. But now I saw their purpose.

  “So much for that,” said Coney. “You don’t need a typist. Neither do you need a linotype operator.”

  He opened his case. It .was full of slim tools, plugs, and lengths of thin cable. He plugged the tape recorder straight into the linotype. I’d also wondered why that mysterious socket was there. “Feed your copy directly,” he said, speaking into the mike, and the brass letters began dropping. “Now I’ll show you how the print can best be fed to the press—”

  “Don’t trouble yourself,” I said, recovering my voice. “We’re sentimental; we’re going to stick to the old-fashioned methods.”

  “That’s against the Government’s policy,” said Coney, reprovingly. “The Automation Program—”

  “To hell with the program,” I said.

  “If you try to block it, you’ll only cause blocks elsewhere in the setup. One is sure to arise on the paper delivery line to your good self, for instance.”

  “Intimidation!” snorted Bill. “Ill go get my Luger, Junior.”

  “Never mind, Bill. Pam’s out of a job and so am I. I refuse to play a one-man band for the Government. So I’ve just fired myself. No editor, no paper.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Coney. “If you won’t run the paper efficiently, Mr. Madden, then the Government will. I’ll show you how.”

  He got through on the visaphone to a Government news agency in London, and asked for general service. He clipped the recorder mike to the visaphone speaker. Someone in the news agency began reading out general news items, dull stuff overloaded with scientific progress reports. The linotype dutifully set up the type.

  “That’s only the rough idea, sir,” said Coney. “There are technical short cuts, of course, and we must arrange distribution at this end. The agency supplies the latest news from all over the world; foreign reports come via automatic translators, naturally.”

  Pam said, “That stuff will bore everyone dead around here. Nobody will buy the rag.”