The Future Is Ours

by Hoch Edward D.

  They sat for another fifteen minutes waiting for word. Presently Linda Sale appeared in the doorway, wearing a maroon body-stocking and looking none the worse for wear from the previous night’s experience. “Anyone for coffee?” she asked, all efficiency. As she served it, Crader found himself comparing her with his own secretary, Judy. Her figure was better, he had to admit, but there was something a bit too coldly detached about her for Crader’s taste. She was too much the anti-sex vision of the future, despite the curves and the body-stocking.

  The phone flickered into life and Jazine took it. He listened intently and made notes. Then he hung up and turned to Crader and Kinsinger. “It’s impossible, but it happened. Five thousand shares of General Tygart were bought through that machine today.”

  Crader stared at the locked computer. He should have been surprised, but somehow he wasn’t. He’d almost expected it. “How are they doing it?” Nobel Kinsinger breathed. “How in hell are they doing it?”

  John Bunyon had appeared from somewhere, standing very close to Linda in the doorway. For a moment nobody said a word, and then his voice broke the silence. “Are you accusing us, Mr. Kinsinger? Because if you are…”

  “Wait, wait.” Crader held up a hand. “We’re past the stage of name-calling. It’s time to get to the bottom of this thing. Earl—you must have the exact time the sale went through the machine today. What was it?”

  Jazine consulted his notes. “Exactly 10:07, shortly after the market opened this morning. Buy General Tygart 5000 shares @ market. The price at the time was 65½. It closed this afternoon at 67.”

  “At 10:07 we were all in this office,” Crader reminded them. “You were at your desk outside the door, Miss Sale. What about you, Bunyon?”

  “I was at my desk. I have witnesses.”

  Crader nodded. “I believe you.”

  “Then how…?” Kinsinger began.

  “How?” Crader stood up and started to pace the floor, feeling his feet sinking into the uniform rug. “I think I’ve scammed that at last. We checked the wiring just yesterday, so there was no tampering from outside the machine. And Earl and I watched it all day. Neither Kinsinger nor anyone else so much as unlocked it.”

  “The thing’s impossible,” Bunyon protested.

  “Not at all,” Crader said. “Before there were SEXCO units everywhere, what happened if you phoned a broker with an order after the market closed for the day? What still happens if you deal through a broker after three p.m. closing time?”

  Earl Jazine’s face lit up. “The order is held till the following morning.”

  “Exactly! And of course the SEXCO operates in the same manner. An order punched into the machine late Thursday afternoon is held till the opening of the Exchange on Friday, and then put through by the computer. Of course it carries Friday’s date on it. With the usual overnight backlog of orders, it’s not surprising the computer at the Stock Exchange took seven minutes to match up 5,000 shares of buy and sell on General Tygart. So the order was recorded at 10:07 today, when it was actually punched into this SEXCO sometime after three yesterday afternoon.”

  “But which one of them did it?” Kinsinger wanted to know. “And how did they get my key to the machine?”

  Crader was smiling as he moved in for the kill. “Remember when you were sick on Friday the 13th? A transaction was made that day, and it helped convince Miss Sale here that you really were being swindled somehow. But think about it—would the swindler allow Thursday afternoon’s order to stand if he knew you were out sick and unable to use the machine on Friday? Of course not! A real swindler’s only hope of success was to avoid discovery of the stock manipulations, not call attention to them. He would have cancelled the previous afternoon’s transaction before the market opened Friday morning.”

  “What are you trying to say?” Kinsinger asked.

  “That there was no swindle. That you faked the whole thing yourself, Kinsinger.”

  “Why? Why would I do that?” he exploded, wheeling in his swivel chair. But his face had gone ashen.

  “Two reasons, I think. One was an attempt to frame and discredit John Bunyon here. And Miss Sale too, if that became necessary. The other was to bring the CIB into the investigation, to cover up some irregularities with your other computers.”

  “The Clarion invasion!” Bunyon almost shouted.

  “Not exactly,” Crader said. “But you’re on the right track. You see, if anyone discovered dirty work in the programming of his other computers, Mr. Kinsinger here could simply point to us and say we were investigating the whole matter of his computer operation.”

  “But what is it, if not Clarion?” Bunyan asked. “What’s he building those space ships for?”

  Crader turned to the big man in the chair. “Do you want to tell them, Kinsinger? Or should I?”

  “Go to hell!”

  “All right. Bunyon, you took Miss Sale to a flippie gathering last night. A moon program, where a fight broke out with some of the Blue Moon crowd. Why did you go there?”

  “Why?” He hesitated, then said, “Well, I think Mr. Kinsinger might be linked to them somehow.”

  “Exactly! You were getting too close to the truth. That was why Kinsinger called us in, and then tried to have you knifed at the meeting last night.”

  “What?” Linda Sale exclaimed. “Knifed?”

  “Mr. Jazine here saved your life. You see, Kinsinger is very close to the Blue Moon people. In fact, he’s their financial backer. I found that out from Washington. The space ships are being built not to explore a mythical planet but to invade the moon—to cast out the Russians for all time and make it a purely American base.”

  “And his computers are programming for the trip!” Bunyon said. “Of course! He could hardly ask Washington for the flight plan to the moon without tipping his hand.”

  Nobel Kinsinger stirred uneasily in his chair. “Am I the only true patriot left in this country?” he growled. But his mind and eyes seemed suddenly far away, perhaps once more leading a charge through the streets of Havana.

  * * * *

  Earl Jazine brought the completed reports in a folder and laid them on a corner of Crader’s crowded deskette. “What will Washington do about it?” he asked. “Kinsinger is a powerful man, the most powerful.”

  “They know a moon invasion can’t be allowed. Now that they know the scheme, steps will be taken. Work on the spacecrafts has already been halted, and the Blue Moon crowd is being fully investigated. It’ll probably be disbanded shortly.”

  “And Kinsinger?”

  “He’s sick. Perhaps they can put him away somewhere in a little room with only a dummy SEXCO unit to play with.”

  Two months later, Crader received an invitation to the wedding of John Bunyon and Linda Sale. He was a bit sorry he couldn’t attend, but he was flying to Hawaii that day. It seemed they needed help out there with a computer that was printing counterfeit money in its spare time.

  ABOUT “NIGHT OF THE MILLENNIUM”

  The months leading up to New Year’s Eve 1999 were filled with real fear, trepidation, and paranoia along with hope and excitement. Individuals, businesses, and whole governments prepared for the possibility of a “Millennium Bug” that might shut down all technology due to our reliance on two-digit dating. (Computers, it was thought, would think it was 1900 rather than 2000.) Written more than a quarter century before the actual millennial event, this surprising story looks at student life, recreational drug use, and a political conspiracy.

  First Publication—The Other Side of Tomorrow, ed. Roger Elwood, Random House, 1973.

  NIGHT OF THE MILLENNIUM

  It was the second day after Christmas—Monday, December 27, 1999, to be exact—and the recruiter from Spandown University was seated in the Parker living room, trying unsuccessfully to gain a commitment fro
m Tommy Parker.

  Tommy was fifteen, due to graduate from high school in June, and Blakestone was the third recruiter who’d called on him that month. High school graduation at fifteen was common now, and for those in the top 10 percent of their class, as Tommy was, high-pressure college recruitment was common, too. The population control so widely practiced since the middle of the 1970s had left the technical industries desperate for new blood, and the great universities in turn actively recruited top scholars the way they’d once gone after football and basketball players.

  Blakestone was tall and gangling, not more than twenty-one himself, and he argued his points with all the tenacity of a bulldog. “This is how it is, Tommy,” he said, leaning forward in his chair as he warmed to a familiar sales pitch. “Industry is starving for young people. At Spandown we can train you for a top job in communication engineering. It’s the wave of the future, it really is! This past June, Bell-Tell hired six of our graduates at salaries in the twenty-thousand-dollar range—and that’s just to start!”

  Tommy Parker uncoiled himself from his chair and took a quick turn around the room. He always thought better when he walked. “To be truthful, Mr. Blakestone, my plans were running in another direction. I want to get into electrosurgery, not communication engineering.”

  “Electrosurgery means another four years at med school, after college. You’d be twenty-three before you earned a dollar! You want to be hitting the books for eight more years while the rest of them are pulling down twenty grand a year from Bell-Tell?”

  “I guess I’m more interested in saving lives than in building robots to run telephone switchboards.”

  “That’s certainly an oversimplification,” Blakestone said. “And I wouldn’t call them robots.” He brushed back his long blond hair.

  Tommy thought about it some more. “No,” he said finally. “It’s not for me.”

  “Think about it, Tommy. Think about it this week and let me know after Century Day.”

  Tommy saw him to the door and watched him drive away in his ’99 Cad. Maybe he was foolish to reject Blakestone’s offer. Certainly Spandown University was one of the best new technical institutions in the nation, awarding degrees in half-a-hundred courses of study.

  Then, too, there was Cathy Whittier. They’d started dating at fourteen, and though marriage might be postponed for another few years, he doubted very much that she would be willing to wait eight years while he finished college and med school. These days, a girl began to worry if she wasn’t married by eighteen.

  Cathy was working during the holidays at Brantlings, the new automated department store by City Center Park. He’d promised to meet her there after work, but before he could leave, his mother called to him.

  “How did it go, Tommy?” she asked, busily twirling the controls of her sonic oven. Mrs. Parker was plump, white-haired, and nearly fifty. She looked too much like a mother and somehow this bothered Tommy. Most of his friends’ mothers looked nearly as young as their children.

  “He offered me a scholarship,” Tommy admitted.

  “Then what are you waiting for? Spandown is a fine university.”

  Tommy munched on a cracker. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re still thinking of electrosurgery? Following in your father’s footsteps? Working twelve hours a day and weekends?” His father was a laser surgeon, earning one hundred thousand dollars a year, but in an operation-oriented society it was a job that demanded long hours from a conscientious practitioner.

  “What’s wrong with that, if it’s something I want to do?”

  “Cathy would tell you what’s wrong in a short time. She wants to marry a man, not a bank account.”

  “All right, Mom,” he told her. “I’m going downtown now to meet Cathy.”

  “Be home for dinner?”

  “Doubt it. I want to see how they’re coming with the stuff for Century Day.”

  * * * *

  Outside it was snowing just a bit—soft, tiny flakes that resulted from cloud seeding. It never snowed hard or long in the cities any more, but only up north in the ski areas and the woods. He remembered his amazement the first time he’d seen fluffy white natural flakes.

  He parked in the underground ramp beneath City Center Park, feeling very grown-up as he wheeled the little electric car into one of the numbered parking slots. He’d had his license only a few months, since the beginning of his senior year in high school, but already he was enjoying the freedom the little car afforded.

  Tommy approached the department store exit and found Cathy waiting there. She was a tall, attractive girl with long blond hair. He noticed with pleasure that she was wearing the glo sweater and pendant he’d given her two days earlier.

  “How’d it go?” he asked her.

  “The Monday after Christmas is always bad. Everyone returning things. I’m exhausted! But what about your college interview? How’d it go?”

  “About like I expected. They seem to send younger guys every year. No generation gap for them.”

  “Did he make you an offer about a scholarship?”

  Tommy chuckled as he led the way to the car. “You sound like my mother. Yes, he made me an offer.”

  “Well?”

  “Engineering’s not my line, Cathy, that’s all. There’s something dehumanizing about all the computers they’re building these days.”

  “You still want to go on to med school, don’t you?”

  “I guess so.”

  They got in the car and rode in silence for several blocks, watching the tiny snowflakes dissolve against the heated windshield. “All right,” she said suddenly, deciding to be cheerful. “Where to now?”

  “I thought we might have a sandwich and look around at the Century Day site. It must be almost ready now.”

  She hugged his arm. “That sounds great.”

  * * * *

  The official Century Day was, of course, on Saturday, when the calendar would change to January 1, 2000. But almost all businesses were shutting down on Friday as well, and elaborate preparations were under way in every community across the country. Overseas, the excitement was much the same—and even the American-Russian moon colony of thirty-five men was planning to celebrate the event.

  On Earth, in the cities, the event had taken on many of the aspects of an old-time county fair. There were rides for the children and exhibits set up by leading corporations. The President himself was to make a speech at midnight Friday. Newspapers and telemagazines were filled with news of the event, inspecting it from every angle.

  Although the celebration was called Century Day, it was not just a new century but a new millennium. There were, of course, those who pointed out that the twenty-first century would not really begin until January 1 of the following year, 2001. But both the government and the people ignored them. It was to be 2000, and no technicality could put off their celebration for another twelve months.

  “Twenty hundred,” Cathy said as they drove past the electronic bandstand and speakers’ platform. “It even sounds funny.”

  “Then say two thousand,” Tommy suggested.

  “That sounds funnier. Besides, next year will be twenty-oh-one.” She stared out the car window at a bearded Flippie who lay in a drugged stupor alongside a building, then looked quickly away. “Are we going to the celebration Friday night?” she asked Tommy.

  “Sure, if you don’t mind getting crushed in the mob.”

  “I won’t mind. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing, something we’ll be able to tell our children all about.” She glanced sideways at him, but he said nothing. “I’m trying to get Mom and Dad to come, too, but they say it’s for the young.”

  “Maybe it is.”

  “One more thing, Tommy—a favor.”

  “What?”

  “Promise
you won’t laugh.”

  “What is it?”

  “Promise!”

  “Oh, all right. What?”

  “Let’s go to the Flippie rally Wednesday night.”

  “What? Those nuts?”

  “Oh, I know they take drugs and all that. But don’t you understand, Tommy—they’re part of it all! I want to experience the whole thing with the change of centuries and the start of 2000.”

  “You’re serious? You really want to go?”

  “Of course! I won’t take any drugs or anything like that, but I want to see them. I want to see them at their rally, doing their thing—not just stretched out in a stupor on the sidewalk.”

  Tommy sighed. “All right. But don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

  * * * *

  On Wednesday the weather was still cloudy, and several of their high school friends left by chartered rocketcopter to spend the long weekend at the northern ski resorts. Tommy had asked Cathy if she wanted to go, but she didn’t ski, and they’d decided to greet the year 2000 in the city.

  So they went alone to the Flippie rally at the city’s old memorial auditorium. The place was crowded, mainly with young people they didn’t know. Light patterns controlled by booming electronic music played on the ceiling and walls of the big auditorium. Tommy felt an excitement created by the music and lights, but he saw at once that many of the Flippies were feeling a different sort of excitement.

  The Flippies were the most visible part of the permanent drug subculture that had existed since the 1960s. Some people attributed their existence to permissiveness, while others saw it as a response to the ever-increasing pressures of a highly technological world. Whatever the cause, the Flippies and their religion of drugs regularly provoked attacks from conservatives and others who viewed them as a threat to the established order.

  “They’re high on drugs,” Tommy said disgustedly. “Probably some synthetic.” He had learned much about drugs—and about drug abuse—from his father.