Authors: Ron Miller
Peculiar Tales (4 page)
“In equal circles equal circumferences are subtended by equal straight lines,”
I said, genuflecting before Its gleaming, well-oiled Holiness.
“If in a right-angled triangle a perpendicular be drawn from the right angle to the base, the triangles adjoining the perpendicular are similar both to the whole and to one another. Amen.”
Then I opened my tool kit and got to work.
It typically requires about three hours to give the New Motive Power a thorough inspection, something which had years before become little more than well-practiced routine. After all, beyond a little cleaning and oiling, what else could God possibly require? So I went into a kind of automatic mode, putting full trust in my basal ganglia, while my mind happily wandered among the anticipated events of the coming week. Not the least of which would be the weekend of the Annual Festival of the Great Age of the Machine, which not coincidentally coincided with the birthday of his Holiness, John Murray Spear. Sister Mary Pinion had promised to be there and I looked forward to seeing her with—I admit—an eagerness I hoped the New Motive Power would understand and forgive. Still, even within the Holiest place in the universe, where my thoughts should have by all rights been nothing less than the Holiest, I found myself recalling the insouciance with which Sister Mary canted her bucket when listening to me read from the Good Book. Only a degree or two from the vertical, mind you—she was no hussy—but enough to noticeably increase my metabolic rate. Indeed, thoughts of Sister Mary’s saucily tipped bucket increased my metabolic rate even now.
This is why I was surprised that I noticed anything wrong at all.
I’m not sure what attracted my attention to that one particular cam—out of the many thousands that were imperceptibly turning on the hundreds of shafts in the case before me—but there was certainly something about it that did not seem quite right. Throwing out the clutch that temporarily disconnected that line of cams from God’s chassis, I pried it from its shaft and took note of its registration number: 12,349,973. That didn’t seem right so I checked the numbers on the cams to either side. The one on the left was 12,349,971 but the one on the right was 12,349,972. It was patently obvious what had happened. A century and a half ago, when the New Motive Power had been originally assembled, cam 12,349,973 and cam 12,349,972 had been transposed. I was about to correct their placement when I paused... What, I asked myself, did this mean? The New Motive Power had obviously been running perfectly for generations in spite of the cams being misplaced. Had any harm been done? The world was as perfect as it could possibly be. In fact, wasn’t this perfection itself a sure indication that the transposition of the cams in fact made no difference at all? In a sense, I thought, this small imperfection only proved the ultimate perfection of the New Motive Power, didn’t it?
But still...it
was
an imperfection, after all, small and insignificant as it might be. I certainly would not be doing my job as a licensed theoengineer nor my duty to the New Motive Power were I to replace the cam where I’d found it, close the hood and forget about it. After all, if the cam did no harm in the wrong place, it could hardly do any harm if placed in the position it was meant to occupy. And, as hard to imagine as it might be, the perfect world might become that little bit more perfect.
But then—was I being presumptuous in thinking that a mere theoengineer could in some way
improve
on the New Motive Power and the world it had created? What if what I perceived as a fault—infinitely minor though it may be—was in fact an intentional anomaly, one planned by the Machine itself for itself? Who was I to assume it had no purpose? Or that I could even understand what that purpose might be? What if the transposed cam, in its small way, was responsible for some part of the world’s perfection?
There are no books any more—other than the Good Book of St. Euclid, of course—but people still tell tales of what the world had been like before the coming of the New Motive Power, tales passed down from father to son for five generations. How in the old days women and the other inferior races had laughably thought themselves the equals of men. How women had gone naked in public, shamelessly exposing their faces, necks, wrists and -nkl-s. How unbelievers, heathens and heretics had gone unpunished, how they had actually been allowed to not only hold their blasphemous beliefs but to express them without fear of instantaneous disintegration. Hard to believe as it may be, there had even been different varieties of humans, called “races” or “breeds”. If the stories can be credited, there were once humans of all sort of different colors: red, yellow, brown and even purple, for all I know. They were even
shaped
differently, with odd-looking noses, eyes and hair. These old tales were probably inspired by the useful anthropoids or demi-humans which the New Motive Power has, in its intelligence, made our servants. Indeed, they do resemble the descriptions of many of the “races” described in the stories, but any resemblances to true humans are—of course—merely superficial. These creatures are merely being a variety of dumb beast, hardly any different than, say, a horse, dog or sheep.
Instead of a half-hour’s rain every other Thursday, the weather had been utterly unpredictable...often disastrously so, with not only rain but horrors such as snow, sleet, hail, tornadoes, floods, hurricanes and earthquakes occurring entirely at random. One day a person might find themselves broiling and the next freezing. When I think of the perpetual, well-regulated Spring provided by the New Motive Power, I cannot even begin to imagine how the human race survived in its primordial days. But beyond providing a clockwork Nature, the New Motive Power enforced proper morality and right thinking among the people of the world.
The more I thought about it the more I became convinced that repairing the misplaced cam was the right thing to do. How could it possibly be otherwise? It beggared sense, logic and theology that the New Motive Power would allow anything harmful to come to either it or the ideal world it had created. If anything, it was just conceivable that there might perhaps be some small imperfection somewhere on the planet, as unlikely as that might sound—perhaps a snail that was near-sighted or a postage stamp with inferior adhesive—and this repair would clean up that final, remaining detail of Creation. This made imminent sense to me. To
not
switch the cams would, I decided, be a distinctly unholy thing to do.
It took but a moment.
I have to admit that I was still a little worried when I left Holy Cottage, but I was soon reassured. Everything seemed no different than it had before. If the repair had resulted in any changes they were obviously small ones, so I felt considerable relief in the knowledge that I’d done the right thing.
The Odeon cinema at the bottom of the hill was still showing
Devil Sluts With Chainsaws
and the old head shop next door was apparently still doing the same brisk business it had back when I was in college. I waved to Chung Liu as he opened the Curry-in-a-Hurry in anticipation of the lunch crowd. He and I are on the committee to get Andrew Jackson Mbondolo re-elected mayor. He was running on a pro-abortion ticket and was a shoe-in for the office.
Everything was as it had always been and I can hardly tell you how relieved I was.
It was a beautiful day—with only a few scattered showers—so I took my time driving home. I was glad I did, too, since young Mary Pinion was sunbathing in her yard, though I really knew that she was only showing off her new monokini. I gave her an appreciative whistle as I passed and she laughed and shouted out a cheery “Good morning!” It was just a harmlessly flattering game of flirtation we played—I certainly had no designs on her nor her upon me. Besides Miss Pinion already had her full share of enthusiastic boyfriends and I had my adored wife, Ethelberta.
She was pleased to see me home so early...and I was no less pleased to see her. My job too often takes me away from home for long hours, so it was a real treat to have most of a day to spend with her. She looked lovelier than usual, too, her brief red playsuit showing off her long tanned limbs to the greatest advantage. I felt a sudden surge of affection for my beautiful Ethelberta and as I embraced her our tentacles slowly entwined in that complex macramé of blue flesh that I knew spelled nothing other than True Love.
MS FOUND AT THE END OF THE WORLD
P.T. Barnum’s prize elephant Jumbo was killed September 15, 1885, crossing railroad tracks in St. Thomas, Ontario. The collision derailed the train, and 150 people were required to haul the elephant’s body up an embankment.
Day I
W
hen God retired in the year 2173, no one but the most mean-spirited begrudged him that. After all, had the human race been less of a pain in the ass, the poor fellow surely would not have been forced into a premature dotage at a time when most other gods are just entering their prime. His retirement threw the churches for a loop, of course, once prayers started coming back with “Address Unknown” stamped on them. The Bible Belt had a fit, naturally, since everyone expected Satan and his minions to run riot over the Earth as soon as God had packed up and left, but it turned out that there was no such thing as the devil or demons or even hell for that matter. God had invented them all from scratch.
But it turned out that whether a deity actually existed or not, or had any active interest in the activities of mankind, was of small interest to most religions, so, after a little regrouping, most of them got along just as they had before.
It was the larger issues that caused the problems. The big things—gravity, photosynthesis, time, the electromagnetic spectrum and the like—were easily and smoothly taken over by the large corporations. They were used to working on a massive scale so that the privatization of the natural utilities went on pretty much as before. Consolidated Edison, for instance, took over the production of the Earth’s magnetic field, subcontracting the aurora borealis and aurora australis to Industrial Light and Magic. Except for the fact that compasses now pointed precisely toward the geographic north pole, which was an improvement I understand, I doubt if many people ever noticed the difference.
As I suggested, the privatization of the natural utilities was a bonanza for the big corporations, but that still left plenty for the enterprising entrepreneur.
“Everyone should be a god at least once in their lives,” said my friend at breakfast this morning. “I can certainly recommend it. When I worked with Barnum, I was the biggest thing there was. You just have no idea, Wally, what it’s like, being the biggest and best at something. It’s quite a dizzying experience, I can tell you, and it can quite easily go to your head if you are not careful.”
I am sure he was right. He usually is about such things.
Day II
You will probably have noticed that I have been using Roman numerals to designate the days in this diary. This is because of a certain laxness that has crept into the products of Federated Mathematics that I attribute to the pervasive influence of unions and the indiscriminate use of foreign labor. For instance, just two days ago I went to the grocery to purchase a few necessary items. I reproduce a facsimile of my receipt here:
Aspirin $2.58
Vitamins $4.98
Q-Tips $3.12
Clove oil $2.19
Chocolate bar $0.75
Total: $14.00
Of course, I saw the error immediately: the cashier had rounded the total to the nearest whole number. I might not have said anything, except that the error had occurred in the store’s favor. I brought the discrepancy to the attention of the assistant manager, who agreed that it did not look correct, but no matter how many times we added the figures, it always came out to fourteen dollars. Even when I took out my own pencil and notebook and totted up the numbers by hand, there it was: fourteen dollars.
Nothing but inexcusably slovenly work on the part of the employees of FedMath. I wrote a sharply worded letter to the management. At least now you can see why I have had to resort to Roman numerals. Here, I’ll show you. This entry is being written on Day 27.3. See what I mean? And I just looked back to check the date I gave for God’s retirement. Just as I expected: it is entirely wrong. No one is paying the slightest attention. Fortunately, I know the fellow at FedMath who is in charge of Roman numerals. Been there for years and years and in spite of the fact that practically no one uses the things any more, he takes enormous pride in his craftsmanship. I shall be sure to let him know about this diary—it will give him some pleasure, I am sure, to see his numbers put to such good use.
“Jenny Lind used to feed me peanuts,” my friend said this morning. “They tasted of lavender, from the touch of her fingers. But for one time, I never got to watch her sing since we were all herded back to the menagerie during her performances, the lions and tigers and horses and the other elephants, though I could hear her, of course. We all could.”
“You said but for one time?”
“Yes . . . yes . . . It was an extraordinary evening. That was back when there was still a moon, you know, quite a while before your time. She came out to my pen, like a will-o’-the-wisp in the moonlight she was, and sang to me. You can’t imagine what she sounded like, Wally, you’ve never lived in a time when there were anything more than eight whole notes. But it was heaven, Wally, or the nearest thing to it. Just thinking about it brings a tear to my eyes.”
And he was speaking the truth, too, since I saw him myself wipe away a bead of moisture with the end of his trunk. I felt a little embarrassed at this display of emotion and changed the subject.
The sun seemed to set a little early tonight and I didn’t approve of the sunset colors at all. There are some things that ought to remain traditional.
Day IV
I suppose I should have mentioned right off the bat that I work for General Naturalistics, Inc., where I have been assistant manager of Surface Tension for nearly ten years. It is a position of some considerable responsibility. The average person takes surface tension entirely for granted, but let them try to do without for a day! Listen to the howls of complaints that would rise then! But, I am proud to say, our department—at least as long as I have been associated with it—has never allowed surface tension to vary by more than 0.00012 percent. Let’s just see Viscosity or Friction try to match that figure! And as for Inertia, why, they are hardly even in the running!
“Gargantua and I would share a bottle of wine a couple of evenings every week,” my friend said. “He was one of the most pleasant companions one could possibly wish for and probably the best friend I ever had at Barnum’s. It was too bad about his face—it had been scarred terribly by acid—but it didn’t bother him in the slightest. ‘Jumbo’, he would say, ‘This face has been my fortune and, besides, I don’t have to look at myself in a mirror if I don’t want to, so what difference does it make to me what I look like?’ See what I mean, Wally? Gargantua was like that, a real philosopher. Could bend a steel rail like a paper clip but wouldn’t hurt a fly. Would you please pass the marmalade?”
The water has been rising I see. Whether this is due to the cutbacks in United Gravity’s budget or not I am in no position to say, but I do feel unusually light on my feet today.
Day XII
I’m sorry I complained about the sunsets earlier. Today I learned that in order to avoid laying off the entire staff of its Spectrum Department, Amalgamated Prismatics has instead cut back on the number of colors. Instead of red, orange, yellow, blue and green we now have just red, yellow and blue. I suppose that will do for most people. Goodness knows, though, what this means for the future of taupe and mauve.
“It’s funny you should ask,” said my friend as we finished our morning coffee. “I hardly recall my youth at all—that is, the years I spent in the African jungle before joining Mr. Barnum’s great organization. Just fleeting images that mean very little to me any more: large green leaves, open plains of yellow grass, tremendously bright sunlight—not like the sunlight you get nowadays, not since Universal Illumination & Heat cut output last year—but the real thing, so bright you could see it with your skin.”
“You must have missed that, I suppose.”
“No, not that I recall. Perhaps I did for a while, but I was too young. The circus was a wonderful adventure, you know, one that any child would have given its teeth to have been part of.”
Federated Mathematics, Inc. adjusted the Laws of Diminishing Returns for the second quarter in a row, creating quite a nice dividend for its stockholders. I’m not so sure I approve of the new amendments to the Law of Averages, however. The Division of Probability has ties to gangsters, I am positive, no matter what anyone says to the contrary.
The sun set late again today, but at least the sunset didn’t look too bad, albeit a trifle monochromatic.
Day XVII
I can’t say I am in the best of moods, not after the past few days. I am normally a placid sort of individual, but I do have my limits. I cannot be imposed upon with impunity.
I am in the habit of taking public transportation to and from my place of employment. It is inexpensive and I believe it my duty to help in even that small way to reduce traffic and pollution. Normally, the ride is a quiet and comfortable one and I employ the time usefully by reading the newspaper or a good, edifying book. But lately . . . Well, the first thing I shall do after completing this entry in my diary will be to compose a
very
sharp letter to General Geometry, Ltd., telling them in no uncertain terms the havoc their slipshod standards have played with the wheels of my bus. Making pi equal to three, indeed! I shall write to my senator if need be.
“Have you ever been to London?” my friend asked as he poured himself a fresh cup of coffee.
“No, I’m afraid I have never had that pleasure.”
“Wonderful city! Just wonderful! I believe I’ve told you it was my second home after leaving Africa. Lived in the Paris zoo first, for a short while, but I don’t have very clear memories of that place. Took a rhinoceros in trade for me, I understand, which just goes to show you something. Well, I lived in London for some three years and was the darling of the city. The kids just loved me, I tell you. Whole city raised a hell of a stink when Barnum came and wanted to buy me. I was flattered beyond words but the zoo couldn’t say no to ten thousand dollars. To tell you the truth, I think they were just tired of feeding me.”
“Really? Why, if anyone were to ask me, I’d say you eat like a bird!”
Day XIX
The speed of sound was lowered today and the speed of light cut even more drastically. It is making my typing difficult. But I suppose it is necessary so that more essential services can be maintained. Momentum will only operate from 6 am to midnight on weekdays, 6 am to 6 pm on Saturdays and not at all on Sundays. But I usually stay in on weekends, so I will probably never notice any difference.
“People have said a lot of ugly things about P.T. Barnum,” my friend said as he picked toast crumbs from his chin. “But I tell you I liked the man. Yes, sir, I did! Did I ever tell you about what he did after that train hit me? Well, the man cried like a baby, he did. Bawled his eyes out. Couldn’t bear to see me buried, so he had me stuffed instead. I continued to travel with the show for years and, to tell you the truth, I hardly felt dead at all.”
“Must have saved Barnum a fortune on food, I imagine.”
“There is that, now that you mention it.”
Pluto was canceled as well as the asteroid belt and the moons of Uranus and Neptune. Just as well, I say. In my opinion they were an unnecessary waste of natural resources.
Day LVI
I see in today’s paper that they’ve decided to eliminate ghosts, poltergeists and imaginary friends. At first this worried me a little, but the elephant is hardly imaginary. And would a ghost make breakfast for me? As for being a poltergeist, I understand they are extraordinarily mischievous and destructive. Aside from some wear and tear on the sofa and the unusually large quantities of toilet paper I purchase, I would hardly know he was there at all.
Among other things, jackals, flatworms, nutrias, armadillos and eleven species of spiders have been canceled as well, I see. I do miss robins and squirrels, but I daresay it won’t make much difference to me one way or the other about nutrias. I don’t even know what they are. Good riddance to the spiders. Nasty things.
“I do have to watch what I eat,” my friend said, nibbling at his bran muffin and gesturing with a butter-laden knife. “Even though I was once one of the largest animals ever displayed publicly, I have no desire to return to my old state of corpulence. No sir! You just try being eleven feet six inches tall and tote around a good seven tons and you’ll see quick enough that it’s no fun.”
“I can imagine,” I replied, nibbling at a piece of melba toast I had soaked in a little warmed skimmed milk.
“You know it took one hundred and fifty men to haul off my carcass after that locomotive rammed it?”
He’d mentioned that before, but I feigned surprise.
Day LXII
The most distressing thing happened today. I was halfway through my breakfast before I realized that my friend was not eating with me! How strange and disturbing it was, to not have noticed. After all, we’d had breakfast together every day for years and years. I wonder where he has gone to?
He did not appear for lunch or dinner, either, which is most unlike him. I checked his room and his bed had not been slept in. This worries me.
It is very hard typing this today. I don’t approve at all of the recent changes instituted by Refraction—they are making my glasses practically useless. I called their service representative, but she told me it was all to blame on the new speed of light. I don’t believe her for an instant.
Letter arrived from the Entropy Commission. Appears that there will be even more leaks. No wonder I’ve been feeling so run down lately.
Day LXIII
I find I have some difficulty in recalling just what my friend looks like. Isn’t that the oddest thing? Perhaps I need an aspirin, though I dislike taking medication unnecessarily. When I close my eyes and concentrate, all I get is an impression of two small, pleasant eyes and a good deal of grey.
Day LXIV
I don’t think he is coming back. I don’t think I will remember him any longer, either. I close my eyes and there is nothing there. I’m writing “him” because I don’t quite recall if he had a name. I’m sure he must have. I went to check his room again this morning, but it seems that I have never had a spare room down the hall from my own. His coffee cup is missing from the cupboard, too.