"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.