Player Piano

by Kurt Vonnegut

  At one point, Kroner raised his big hand and asked if he might make a comment. "Just to sort of underline what you're saying, Paul, I'd like to point out something I thought was rather interesting. One horsepower equals about twenty-two manpower--big manpower. If you convert the horsepower of one of the bigger steel-mill motors into terms of manpower, you'll find that the motor does more work than the entire slave population of the United States at the time of the Civil War could do--and do it twenty-four hours a day." He smiled beatifically. Kroner was the rock, the fountainhead of faith and pride for all in the Eastern Division.

  "That is an interesting figure," said Paul, searching for his place in the manuscript. "And that, of course, simply applies to the First Industrial Revolution, where machines devalued muscle work. The second revolution, the one we're now completing, is a little tougher to express in terms of work saved. If there were some measure like horsepower in which we could express annoyance or boredom that people used to experience in routine jobs--but there isn't."

  "You can measure rejects, I'm here to tell you," said Baer, "and the darnedest, stupidest mistakes imaginable. The waste, the stoppages, the lemons! You can express it in dollars all right, dollars that went into bad workmanship."

  "Yes," said Paul, "but I was thinking of it from the worker's point of view. The two industrial revolutions eliminated two kinds of drudgery, and I was looking for some way of estimating just how much the second revolution had relieved men of."

  "I work," said Baer. Everyone laughed.

  "The others--across the river," said Paul.

  "They never did work," said Kroner, and again everyone laughed.

  "And they're reproducing like rabbits," said Anita.

  "Somebody telling dirty jokes about rabbits reproducing?" said Finnerty, standing in the doorway. He swayed slightly, and his breathing was shallow. He had evidently found the whiskey. "Which one was it? Where the little girl rabbit went into the rabbit hardware store, and the clerk--"

  Kroner was on his feet. "Well, Finnerty--how are you, my boy?" He summoned the waiter. "You're just in time for coffee, my boy--a big cup of black coffee." He put his huge arm around Finnerty and steered him to the place that Anita had had cleared. Finnerty picked up the place card of the engineer next to him, squinted at it, then at the man. "Where's my goddamn place card?"

  "Give him his place card, for heaven's sakes," said Anita.

  Paul took it from his pocket, smoothed it out, and set it before Finnerty. Finnerty nodded, and fell into a morose silence.

  "We were just talking about the Second Industrial Revolution," said Kroner, as though nothing were amiss. "Paul was talking about how there is no real measure of the kind of drudgery it has eliminated. I think the story can be told in terms of a curve, perhaps--as most stories can be presented most clearly."

  "Not the one about the little girl rabbit in the rabbit hardware store," said Finnerty.

  Everyone, following Kroner's example, ignored him. "If we plot man hours worked against the number of vacuum tubes in use, the man hours worked drop as the tubes increase."

  "Like rabbits," said Finnerty.

  Kroner smiled. "As you say, like rabbits. Incidentally, Paul, another interesting sidelight your father probably told you about is how people didn't pay much attention to this, as you call it, Second Industrial Revolution for quite some time. Atomic energy was hogging the headlines, and everybody talked as though peacetime uses of atomic energy were going to remake the world. The Atomic Age, that was the big thing to look forward to. Remember, Baer? And meanwhile, the tubes increased like rabbits."

  "And dope addiction, alcoholism, and suicide went up proportionately," said Finnerty.

  "Ed!" said Anita.

  "That was the war," said Kroner soberly. "It happens after every war."

  "And organized vice and divorce and juvenile delinquency, all parallel the growth of the use of vacuum tubes," said Finnerty.

  "Oh, come on, Ed," said Paul, "you can't prove a logical connection between those factors."

  "If there's the slightest connection, it's worth thinking about," said Finnerty.

  "I'm sure there isn't enough connection for us to be concerned with here," said Kroner severely.

  "Or enough imagination or honesty," said Finnerty.

  "Oh, honestly! What are you talking about?" said Anita. She wadded her napkin nervously. "Come on--shall we leave this gloomy place and have the checker championship?"

  The response was sighs and grateful nods all around the table. With little regret, Paul laid the remainder of his speech aside. The party, save for Finnerty, swept into the club's game room, where a checkerboard had already been set up, and where a battery of floor lamps ringed the table on which it rested, immaculate and glaring.

  The four challengers trotted ahead, held a hurried conference, and three of them went to the checkroom. The fourth, Fred Berringer, sat down at the board and grinned mysteriously.

  Paul took the chair opposite. "Play much?" he said.

  "A little, a little."

  "Let's see, Fred, you're from Minnesota, aren't you? Is the Minnesota checker championship by any chance at stake, Fred?"

  "Sorry, I've got the club championship to win, and nothing to lose."

  "You're going to lose, going to lose," said Baer. "They all do, all do, all of them do, eh Paul? All lose to you."

  "Modesty forbids that I answer," said Paul. "My record speaks for itself." He permitted himself a mild sort of elation over his invincibility. There would be some bizarre twist to tonight's game, judging from the activity in the checkroom, but he wasn't worried.

  "Make way for Checker Charley! Make way for Checker Charley!" shouted Berringer's seconds from the foyer.

  The crowd in the gameroom parted, and the three rolled in a man-high box that was shrouded in a bedsheet and grumbled along on casters.

  "There's a man in there?" said Kroner.

  "A brain, a brain," said Berringer triumphantly. "Checker Charley, world's champion checker player, and looking for new planets to conquer." He grabbed a corner of the bedsheet, and unveiled Charley--a gray steel box with a checkerboard painted on its front panel. In each square that could be occupied by a checkerpiece were a red and a green jewel, each with a lamp behind it.

  "Pleased to meet you, Charley," said Paul, trying to smile. When he realized what was going on, he felt himself reddening and getting a little mad. His first inclination was to walk the hell out.

  Baer had the back of the box open. "Oh, oh, my, yes indeed," he said. "Look, look, look, and that goes over to there--and oh! Ha! Oh, my, I believe it's even got a memory. Isn't that what the tape's for, boys, huh? Memory? Tape memory?"

  "Yessir," said Berringer uncertainly. "I guess so."

  "You built this?" said Kroner incredulously.

  "Nossir," said Berringer, "my father. His hobby."

  "Berringer, Berringer, Berringer," said Baer, frowning.

  "You know--Dave Berringer; this is Dave's boy," said Kroner.

  "Oh!" Baer looked at Checker Charley with new admiration. "By George, no wonder, no wonder, no wonder." Fred's father, one of the top computing-machine men in the country, had built it.

  Paul slouched in his chair resignedly and waited for the comedy to begin. He looked at young Berringer's dull, complacent face, and was sure that the youngster didn't know much more about the machine than its external switches and signals.

  Finnerty strolled in from the dining room, eating from a plate he held at chin level. He set his plate atop the cabinet and stuck his head into the back, alongside Baer's. "Any money on this?" he said.

  "Are you crazy?" said Paul.

  "Anything you say, boy; anything you say," said Berringer. He laid his fat billfold on the table.

  The other three youngsters had plugged a cord from Checker Charley into an outlet in the baseboard; and now, as they flicked switches on and off, the box hummed and clicked, and lights on the front panel winked off and on.

  Pau
l stood. "I concede," he said. He patted the box. "Congratulations, Charles, you're a better man than I am. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the new club champion." He started out toward the bar.

  "Darling," said Anita, catching his sleeve. "Oh, come on now, that isn't like you."

  "I can't win against the damn thing. It can't make a mistake."

  "You can at least play against it."

  "And prove what?"

  "Come on, Paul," said Finnerty, "I've looked Charley over, and he doesn't look so all-fired bright to me. I've got fifty dollars on you with Goldilocks here, and I'll cover anybody else who thinks Checker Charley's got a chance."

  Eagerly, Shepherd slapped down three twenties. Finnerty covered him.

  "Bet the sun won't rise tomorrow," said Paul.

  "Play," said Finnerty.

  Paul settled into his chair again. Dispiritedly, he pushed a checkerpiece forward. One of the youngsters closed a switch, and a light blinked on, indicating Paul's move on Checker Charley's bosom, and another light went on, indicating the perfect countermove for Berringer.

  Berringer smiled and did what the machine told him to do. He lit a cigarette and patted the pile of currency beside him.

  Paul moved again. A switch was closed, and the lights twinkled appropriately. And so it went for several moves.

  To Paul's surprise, he took one of Berringer's pieces without, as far as he could see, laying himself open to any sort of disaster. And then he took another piece, and another. He shook his head in puzzlement and respect. The machine apparently took a long-range view of the game, with a grand strategy not yet evident. Checker Charley, as though confirming his thoughts, made an ominous hissing noise, which grew in volume as the game progressed.

  "As of now, I am offering odds of three to one against Checker Charley," said Finnerty. Berringer and Shepherd both took him up on it for another twenty apiece.

  Paul exchanged one man for three.

  "Say--now wait just a minute," said Berringer.

  "Wait for what?" said Finnerty.

  "Something's wrong."

  "You and Checker Charley are being beaten is all. Somebody always wins, and somebody always loses," said Finnerty. "That's the way it goes."

  "Sure, but if Checker Charley was working right he couldn't lose." Berringer arose unsteadily. "Listen, we'd better call this thing off while we find out what's wrong." He tapped the front panel experimentally. "Jesus Christ, he's hot as a frying pan!"

  "Finish the game, Junior. I want to know who's champ," said Finnerty.

  "Don'tcha see!" said Berringer furiously. "It isn't working right." He looked pleadingly around the room.

  "Your move," said Paul.

  Berringer looked helplessly at the lights, slid a man forward.

  Paul took two more of Berringer's pieces and made his own piece a king. "This must be the trickiest booby trap in history," he laughed. He was enjoying himself immensely.

  "Any minute now, Checker Charley's going to see his opening, and then it's going to be bye-bye championship," said Finnerty. "Hop, hop, hop, hoppity hop. Curtains, Paul."

  "Calculus is a wonderful thing," said Paul. He sniffed. The air was getting heavy with a smell like burning paint, and his eyes were beginning to smart.

  One of Berringer's seconds jerked open the back of the box, and smoke, colored a poisonous green by the glare from within, poured into the room.

  "Fire!" cried Baer.

  A waiter came running with a fire extinguisher and sent a jet of fluid into Checker Charley's entrails. Steam billowed up as the jet fizzed and sputtered on the glowing parts.

  The lights on Charley's steel bosom were skittering about the board wildly now, playing a demoniacal and swift game according to rules only the machine could understand. All the lights went on at once, a hum swelled louder and louder, until it sounded like a thunderous organ note, and suddenly died. One by one, the little lamps winked out, like a village going to sleep.

  "Oh my, my, oh my," murmured Baer.

  "Fred, I'm so sorry," said Anita. She looked reproachfully at Paul.

  The engineers crowded around Checker Charley, and those in the front rank probed through the ashes, melted tubes, and blackened wires. Tragedy was in every face. Something beautiful had died.

  "Such a lovely thing," said Kroner sadly, resting his hand on Berringer's shoulder. "If you like, perhaps things would go easier if I told your father what happened."

  "It was practically his life--away from the laboratory," said Berringer. He was shocked and scared. "Years and years. Why did it have to happen?" It was one more hollow echo to the question humanity had been asking for millenniums, the question men were seemingly born to ask.

  "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away," said Finnerty.

  Berringer bit his lip and nodded, until it began to dawn on him just who it was that had spoken. His round, stupid face slowly took on a mean, threatening cast. "Uh-huh," he said, licking his lips, "the wise guy. Almost forgot about you."

  "Well, you'd better not. I've got a lot of money bet on who's going to win."

  "Now, see here, Finnerty," said Kroner placatingly, "let's call it a draw, shall we? I mean, after all, the boy's got a right to be upset, and--"

  "Draw, hell," said Finnerty. "Paul beat Checker Charley fair and square."

  "I'm beginning to see, I think," said Berringer menacingly. He gathered Finnerty's lapels in his hands. "What'd you do to Checker Charley, wise guy?"

  "Ask Baer. His head was in there with mine. Baer, did I do anything to Charley?"

  "What, eh? Do anything, do anything? Damage, you mean? No, no, no," said Baer.

  "So sit down and finish the game, fat boy," said Finnerty. "Or concede. Either way, I want my money."

  "If you didn't do anything to Charley, how come you were so sure he'd lose?"

  "Because my sympathy's with any man up against a machine, especially a machine backing up a knucklehead like you against a man like Paul. Besides, Charley had a loose connection."

  "Then you should have said so!" said Berringer. He gestured at the ruins of the machine. "Look--just look, will you? Look what you did by not telling me about the connection. I ought to mop this place up with your dirty face."

  "Now, now, now--there, there," said Kroner, stepping between the two. "You should have said something about that connection, Ed. This is a shame, a real shame."

  "If Checker Charley was out to make chumps out of men, he could damn well fix his own connections. Paul looks after his own circuits; let Charley do the same. Those who live by electronics, die by electronics. Sic semper tyrannis." He gathered up the bills from the table. "Good night."

  Anita dug her fingernails into Paul's arm. "Oh Paul, Paul, he's ruined the whole evening."

  On his way out, Finnerty paused by Paul and Anita. "Nice going, champ."

  "Please give them their money back," said Anita. "The machine wasn't working right. Be fair. Isn't that right, Paul?"

  To the amazement of the whole somber group, Paul lost control and burst out laughing.

  "That's the spirit, champ," said Finnerty. "I'm going home now, before these gentlemen sportsmen find a rope."

  "Home? Washington?" said Anita.

  "Your house, dear. I haven't got a place in Washington any more."

  Anita closed her eyes. "Oh, I see."

  6

  "WHAT WAS HIS expression like when he said it?" said Anita.

  Paul had the comforter pulled up over his face and was trying to get to sleep tightly curled in the dark, muffled womb he made of his bed each night. "He looked sad," he murmured. "But he always looks sad--real sweet and sad."

  For three hours they had been going over the events of the evening at the club, coming back again and again to what Kroner had said by way of farewell.

  "And he didn't take you aside for a couple of words at any time?" She was wide awake.

  "Scout's honor, Anita, all he said was what he said at the last."

  She repeated Kroner
's words judiciously, " 'I want you to come see me and Mom sometime next week, Paul.' "

  "That's all."

  "Nothing about Pittsburgh?"

  "No," he said patiently. "I tell you, no." He tucked the comforter more snugly around his head and pulled his knees up higher. "No."

  "Haven't I got a right to be interested?" she said. He'd evidently hurt her. "Is that what you're telling me, that I haven't the right to care?"

  "Gladja care," he said thickly. "Fine, wonderful, thanks." In the quasi nightmare of being only half asleep, he visualized the notion of man and wife as one flesh--a physical monstrosity, pathetic, curious, and helpless Siamese twins.

  "Women do have insight into things that men don't have," she was saying. "We notice important things that men let go by. Kroner wanted you to break the ice about Pittsburgh tonight, and you just--"

  "We'll find out what Kroner has on his mind when I call on him. Now, please, let's sleep."

  "Finnerty!" she said. "He's the one who threw a monkey wrench into things. Honestly! How long is he going to stay?"

  "He'll get sick of us in a couple of days, the way he gets sick of anything."

  "The N.I.P.B. mustn't leave him much time to go traipsing over the country to insult old friends."

  "He quit. Hasn't got a job."

  She sat up in bed. "They fired him! Well, good for them."

  "Quit. They offered him a raise to stay. His idea." He found himself awakened by a subject that interested him. Anita's hammering at the subject of Pittsburgh had tended to make him curl up tighter and tighter. Now he felt himself relaxing somewhat, straightening out like a man. Finnerty was a magical name again; Paul's feelings about him had swung a full circle. Morale and esprit de corps, which Paul hadn't felt in any undertaking for years, had sprung up between them in the course of the exhilarating humiliation of Checker Charley. Moreover--Paul's thoughts were coming alive as though refreshed by a cool wind--there was enchantment in what Finnerty had done, a thing almost as inconceivable and beautifully simple as suicide: he'd quit.

  "Paul ..."

  "Hmmmm?"

  "Your father thought you'd be manager of Pittsburgh someday. If he were alive, nothing would make him happier than to know you got the job."

  "Umm hmmmm." He remembered how Anita, shortly after their marriage, had dug up a picture of his father from a trunk and had had it enlarged and framed as her first birthday present to him. The picture was over on his bureau now, where she had put it--where he could see it the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night. She had never met Paul's father, and he hadn't said much about him to her; yet she'd built up a kind of mythology about the man that could keep her talking knowingly for hours. The myth had it that Paul's father in his youth had been just as easygoing as Paul, and that the strength that got him to the top job in the economy came in the middle years of his life--came in the years Paul was just beginning.