John D. MacDonald
Other Times, Other Worlds
“The Mechanical Answer,” “Dance of a New World,” “Ring Around the Redhead,” “A Child Is Crying” and “Flaw” Copyright © 1948 by John D. MacDonald.
“But Not a Dream” Copyright © 1949 by John D. MacDonald.
“Spectator Sport,” “Half-Past Eternity,” “The Big Contest” and “Susceptibility” Copyright © 1950 by John D. MacDonald.
“Common Denominator” Copyright © 1951 by John D. MacDonald.
“Game for Blondes” Copyright © 1952 by John D. MacDonald.
“Labor Supply” Copyright © 1953 by Mercury Press, Inc. Reprinted from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
“The Legend of Joe Lee” Copyright © 1964 by John D. MacDonald.
“The Annex” Copyright © 1968 by John D. MacDonald. Originally appeared in Playboy Magazine.
The Mechanical Answer
Originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, May 1948.
A suggestion on the problem of a true thinking — not simply calculating — machine. And a suggestion, too, that not even the ultimate thinking machine can answer the most fundamental of human questions!
Jane Kayden, the traces of dried tears on her pretty face, said, in a hopeless tone for the hundredth time, “But why does it have to be you, Joe?”
Joseph Kayden, Director of Automatic 81, paced back and forth through the room of their apartment that they called the Main Lounge. After they were married, when permission was given for Jane to live on the premises at Automatic 81, she had designed the apartment. Automatic 81 was in the Mesilla Valley, eighteen miles from Albuquerque.
The two opposite walls of the Main Lounge were of clear glass. One wall looked out across the valley. The other looked out across the vast production floor of Automatic 81, where the humming machine tools fabricated the portable tele sets. Automatic 81 was a nearly average government facility, with all unloading and sorting of incoming raw materials, all intraplant transportation of semi-fabricated and completed parts, all assembly and all inspection, all packing and labeling accomplished by the prehensile steel fingers of automatic equipment. Joe Kayden, lean and moody, was the director and only employee.
On the end wall was the warning panel. With any break down, a buzzer and flashing lights indicated the department and the specific piece of equipment. That portion of operations dependent on the breakdown stopped automatically until the production break was repaired. Kayden was responsible for the complete operation and maintenance. Each month his production quota figures were radioed from Washington and he adjusted his production to fit the quota.
He stopped by her chair and looked down at her, his bleak look softening. “Honey, I can’t say no. The government spent eight years and a lot of money filling my thick head with electronics, quantum mechanics and what all. I’m their boy and when they say jump, Joe jumps.”
“I know all that, Joe. I know that you can’t quit. But why do they have to pick you? They’ve got what they call their high-level people, the theorists and all. People all wound up in the philosophy of mathematics. You’re one of the workers. Why does it have to be you?”
He held his hands out in a helpless gesture. “I don’t know. But I can make a guess. They’ve been appropriated two hundred million a year for the past four years on the project and they aren’t getting anywhere. So I guess that some congressman has told them to bring in one of the practical boys from the Department of Civilian Production. They picked me.”
“Out of over two hundred men they picked you? Why, Joe? Why?”
“Because I’ve never missed a quota. Because I’ve cut the warning board down to less lights than any other outfit. Because I rigged up a new standby system and because I shifted more maintenance over to automatic equipment than anybody else. They just stuck the two hundred and something cards in the sorter and sorted for the guy with the most practical imagination and the best ratio of accomplishment. My card dropped out. So they called me up and said, ‘Come on down here to Poughkeepsie, Joseph, and take over the Thinking Machine.’ ”
Out of the midst of her distress, she looked at him proudly and said, “You have done a good job, Joe.”
He kicked a small stool closer to her chair, sat on it and took her hand. “Here is the big trouble, Jane. They don’t know it and I don’t think you do either. But by myself I couldn’t have done these things. You’re the guy who has... what do they say?... given me pause to think. You don’t know a thing about production or about electronics, honey, but you’ve got a terrific quotient of horse sense. You’ve made me see things about this place I’d never have seen by myself. The board is small now because you did so much griping about how much of my time answering the board took. Remember all the times you’ve started a sentence with, ‘Why don’t you—?’ ”
“Yes, but—”
“You’ve brought the simple outlook of a child to this problem and all I’ve ever done is take your direct ideas and put them into shape. They don’t want me, they want us.”
She brightened visibly. “Then why can’t—”
“No. They won’t do it. They’ve surrounded the whole project with a batch of phony secrecy. Back in the days when it was called a Project to Develop a Selective Mechanical, Numerical, Semantic and Psychic Integrator and Calculator, we could have both gone on the job. But then, after the press got hold of it and labeled it the Thinking Machine and stated that in the field of warfare it would give better, quicker answers than any General Staff, the War Department made it Top Secret and that’s the way it stands. For you it would be no soap.”
The quick tears came again. “Joe, I’ll be so lonesome!”
“So will I,” he said quietly.
“And I’ll be afraid, Joe, darling. Remember when you met Toby Wanderer in El Paso? Remember what he said?”
Kayden nodded. He remembered. Toby had just been fired from the Thinking Machine Project. Not fired, really, but retired with a pension for life. Poor Toby. Toby had got a bit tight and talked more than he should have. He talked about the tremendous strain of the Project, of the strange mental breakdown of the men who worked on it. Something about a machine to duplicate the processes of the human mind. When Toby had cracked the first time, they had given him shock treatments and put him back to work. Finally the interval between the necessary shock treatments grew too small and Toby was given his pension. Toby had cursed the Project with cold fury and said that it was impossible — that the most they’d ever accomplish was a machine which could duplicate the mental processes of a four-year-old child, emotionally unstable, with a limited I.Q. for its years.
Unfortunately Joseph Kayden had told Jane the entire story, never believing for a moment that he would be selected to join the Project, that political expediency would result in his being placed in charge. It was obvious to him that his appointment had been made out of desperation.
“Will you be able to write me?” Jane asked.
“Probably. With censorship. And out of the goodness of their heart they give me two days chaperoned leave every two months.”
It was time to leave. The shuttle aircraft was due. Joe packed moodily while Jane wept some more. The shuttle would bring the new man for Automatic 81. He’d live outside until Jane could find a place to move their possessions to.
At last he was packed and they stood, his arms tight around her, her fair hair brushing his cheek. He whispered, “I’ll probably make a blob of it, honey, and they’ll boot me out quickly. To keep yourself busy, why don’t you brush up on your neurology and psychiatry?”