Meadows - Joy Ride

M y name isAndrews, third assistant vice president in charge of maintenancefor Cybernetic Publishers.

It is not generally known that all the periodical publicationsfor the world were put out by Cybernetics. We did not conceal themonopoly deliberately, but we found that using the names of otherpublishing houses helped to give our magazines an impression ofvariety. Of course, we didn't want too much variety, either; onlythe tried and tested kind.

Cybernetics gained its monopoly by cutting costs of production.It had succeeded in linking electronic calculators to photo-copyingmachines. Through this combination, all kinds of texts andillustrations could be produced automatically.

The shuffling produced enough variation in the final product tosuggest novelty to the reader without actually presenting anythingstrange or unexpected.

Once the cards were in the machine, they set off electronicimpulses which, by a scanning process, projected photographicimages of type and illustrations to a ribbon of paper. This ribbonran through a battery of xerographic machines to reproduce theexact number of copies specified by the market indicator.

Everything worked smoothly without the necessity for thought,which, as you know, is expensive and often wasteful.

In the second week of the Calamity, one machine after anotherseemed to go put of order. I couldn't tell whether the trouble wasin the cards, in the research office, or in the machines.

First, one produced something entitled "A Critique of theBureaucratic Culture Pattern." Then another would give out nothingbut lyric poems. A third simply printed obvious gibberish, theletters F-R-E-E-D-O-M. And one of our oldest machines ran off aseries of limericks of a decidedly pungent flavor.

I did all I could to straighten them out. Even our cleaningcompounds were analyzed for traces of alcohol. But we weren't ableto locate the trouble. And we didn't dare shut off the powerbecause that would have backed up our continuous stream of pulp andpaper all the way to Canada, Alaska and Scandinavia. There didn'tseem to be anything to do but let the publications go on through tothe distribution center.

Before they were returned to the pulp mills, some of thepublications reached private hands and created something of a stir,especially the limericks. One of them went something like this:"There was a young ." (Passage defaced.)

M y name is Minton,traffic officer emeritus on the Extrapolated Parkway.

The Parkway was equipped with the usual electronic controls topropel cars magnetically, to maintain a safe distance between allcars, and to hold them automatically in their proper lanes. Thecontrols also turned cars off the Parkways at the proper exit,according to the settings on the individual automobile'sdirection-finder.

On the ninth day of the Calamity, the controls became erratic.Cars ran off the highway at the wrong exits, even though theirdirection-finders seemed to be in good order. Many turned around incircles at entrances to the Parkway and failed to enter. Driversabandoned cars in despair and actually made their way on foot.Those who remembered how to steer by hand, mainly persons withobsolete cars, were able to travel by using back country roads. Itwas almost like old times, when we used to have accidents.

Meanwhile, I kept getting radio calls from motorists whose carswere trapped on the highway. They were unable to turn off anywhere,even at the wrong exit. The magnetic propellers forced them tocontinue traveling a circular route for hours. I don't know whatthey expected me to do about it.

They tried to say I tampered with the controls, but I had nosuch orders. There was nothing in the Traffic Officer's Manual tocover this situation, so I naturally did nothing.

Anyway, I think that the trouble lay with the direction-findersin the cars rather than with the Highway Controls. For several dayspreviously, a great many cars no matter how the automaticdirection-finders were set, had been known to head for water ifthey weren't watched. Because of the fact that so many motoristshad formed a habit of snoozing, once the car was in motion, therewere a number of drownings. If we could have done anything toprevent them, we probably would have, though that wasn't ourjob.

M y name is Elder,sound director for Station 40 N 180.

We had noticed nothing unusual about our broadcasts until thethird day of the Calamity. That was the first time one of ourultra-sensitive microphones began to pick up and broadcast speechesfrom unknown sources.

Our third assistant monitor was the first to notice. He calledand told me that interference was disrupting the program. A fewminutes later, he said that the sponsor's message, as broadcast,did not conform to the copy which had been put on the tape. (Toeliminate studio errors, all our broadcast programs were firstrecorded on electro-magnetic tape and edited before they werereleased.)

We checked and found that none of the commercial messages weregoing through properly. The fact is that they were broadcast veryimproperly.

I tested the microphone myself and was reported as saying, "Whatdifference does it make?" I had used the conventional testingphrases, "One, two, three, four," yet all three monitors swore thatthe other sentence had been uttered in my voice.

We switched at once to broadcasting music exclusively as analternative to verbal programs, but the microphones continued topickup vocal interference. The voices were of many kinds and notalways distinct. They sounded sincere and the words were plain, butI could not discern any meaning in them.

F or a while, untilthe Calamity affected wire communications, too, we receivedtelephone comments from our audience.

A few people complained about the confusion, but most asked usto turn off the music and let the voices come through clearly.

One of the listeners said to us, "I haven't heard men speaktheir minds so plainly since the morning Grandma wrecked Grandpa'snew helicopter."

M y name is Wilson.I manned the remote control panel for the Duplicator ConstructionCompany.

As you know, we directed a battery of building machines whicherected mass housing projects. I directed only the destination ofour machines. Once I sent them to a site, they completed their workautomatically with the materials installed at our supply depot.