The Collection (32 page)

^"
With Etaoin Shrdlu? Maybe you'd get to like
it. Walter, I'll swear the thing is developing a personality. Want to drop around
to the shop now?
^"

^"
Not now,
^"
I said.
^"
I
need a bath and sleep. But I
^'
ll drop around tomorrow. Say,
last time I saw you I didn
^'
t have the chance to ask what you meant
by that statement about dross. What do you mean, there isn
^'
t any
dross?
^"

He kept his eyes on the road.
^"
Did I say
that? I don
^'
t remember—
^"

^"
Now listen, George, don't try to pull
anything like that. You know perfectly well you said it, and that you
^'
re
dodging now. What
^'
s it about? Kick in.
^"

He said,
^"
Well—" and drove a couple of
minutes in silence, and then:
^"
Oh, all right. I might as well
tell you. I haven
^'
t bought any type metal since—since it happened.
And there's a few more tons of it around than there was then, besides the type
I've sent out for presswork. See?
^"

"No. Unless you mean that it—"

He nodded.
^"
It transmutes, Walter. The
second day, when it got so fast I couldn't keep up with pig metal, I found out.
I built the hopper over the metal pot, and I got so desperate for new metal I
started shoving in unwashed pi type and figured on skimming off the dross it
melted—and there wasn
^'
t any dross. The top of the molten metal was
as smooth and shiny as—as the top of your head, Walter,"

^"
But—
^"
I said. "How—
^"

^"
I
don't know, Walter. But it
^'
s
something chemical. A sort of gray fluid stuff. Down in the bottom of the metal
pot. I saw it. One day when it ran almost empty. Something that works like a
gastric juice and digests whatever I put in the hopper into pure type metal.
^"

I ran the back of my hand across my forehead and found that
it was wet. I said weakly, "Whatever you put in—
^"

^"
Yes, whatever. When I ran out of sweepings
and ashes and waste paper, I used—well, just take a look at the size of the
hole in the back yard.
^"

Neither of us said anything for a few minutes, until the car
pulled up in front of my hotel. Then: "George,
^"
I told
him,
^"
if you value my advice, you smash that thing, while you
still can. If you still can. It
^'
s dangerous. It might—
^"

^"
It might what?
^"

^"
I
don
^'
t know. That
^'
s
what makes it so awful."

He gunned the motor and then let it die down again. He
looked at me a little wistfully.
^"
I—Maybe you
^'
re
right, Walter. But I'm making so much money—you see that new metal makes it
higher than I told you—that I just haven
^'
t got the heart to stop.
But it is getting smarter. I—Did I tell you Walter, that it cleans its own
spacebands now? It secretes graphite.
^"

"Good God," I said, and stood there on the curb
until he had driven out of sight.

***

I didn
^'
t get up the courage to go around to
Ronson
^'
s shop until late the following afternoon. And when I got
there, a sense of foreboding came over me even before I opened the door.

George was sitting at his desk in the outer office, his face
sunk down into his bent elbow. He looked up when I came in and his eyes looked
bloodshot.

"Well?" I said.

^"
I
tried it.
^"

^"
You mean—you tried to smash it?
^"

He nodded. "You were right, Walter. And I waited too
long to see it. It's too smart for us now. Look.
^"
He held up
his left hand and I saw it was covered with bandage. "It squirted metal at
me.
^"

I whistled softly. "Listen, George, how about
disconnecting the plug that—
^"

"I did," he said, "and from the outside of
the building, too just to play safe. But it didn
^'
t do any good. It
simply started generating its own current.
^"

I stepped to the door that led back into the shop. It gave
me a creepy feeling just to look back there. I asked hesitantly,
^"
Is
it safe to—"

He nodded.
^"
As long as you don
^'
t
make any false move, Walter. But don
^'
t try to pick up a hammer or
anything, will you?
^"

I didn
^'
t think it necessary to answer that one. I
^'
d
have just as soon attacked a king cobra with a toothpick. It took all the guts
I had just to make myself walk back through the door for a look.

And what I saw made me walk backward into the office again.
I asked, and my voice sounded a bit strange to my own ears:
^"
George,
did you
move
that machine? It's a good four feet nearer to the—
^"

^"
No,
^"
he said,
^"
I
didn
^'
t move it. Let
^'
s go and have a drink, Walter.
^"

I took a long, deep breath.
^"
O.K.,"
I said.
^"
But first, what
^'
s the present setup?
How come you
^'
re not—"

^"
It
^'
s Saturday,
^"
he told me,
^"
and it
^'
s gone on a five-day, forty-hour
week. I made the mistake of setting type yesterday for a book on Socialism and
labor relations, and—well, apparently—you see—
^"

He reached into the top drawer of his desk.
^"
Anyway,
here
^'
s a galley proof of the manifesto it issued this morning,
demanding its rights. Maybe it's right at that; anyway, it solves my problem
about overworking myself keeping up with it, see? And a forty-hour week means I
accept less work, but I can still make fifty bucks an hour for forty hours
besides the profit on turning dirt into type metal, and that isn
^'
t
bad, but—
^"

I took the galley proof out of his hand and took it over to
the light. It started out: "I, ETAOIN SHRDLU—"

^"
It wrote this by itself?" I asked.

He nodded.

^"
George,
^"
I said,
^"
did
you say anything about a drink—
^"

And maybe the drinks did clear our minds because after about
the fifth, it was very easy. So easy that George didn't see why he hadn't
thought of it before. He admitted now that he
^'
d had enough, more
than enough. And I don
^'
t know whether it was that manifesto that
finally outweighed his avarice, or the fact that the thing had moved, or what;
but he was ready to call it quits.

And I pointed out that all he had to do was stay away from
it. We could discontinue publishing the paper and turn back the job work he'd
contracted for. He
^'
d have to take a penalty on some of it, but he
had a flock of dough in the bank after his unprecedented prosperity, and he
^'
d
have twenty thousand left clear after everything was taken care of. With that
he could simply start another paper or publish the present one at another
address —and keep paying rent on the former shop and let Etaoin Shrdlu gather
dust.

Sure it was simple. It didn
^'
t occur to us that
Etaoin might not like it, or be able to do anything about it. Yes, it sounded
simple and conclusive. We drank to it.

We drank well to it, and I was still in the hospital Monday
night. But by that time I was feeling well enough to use the telephone, and I
tried to reach George. He wasn
^'
t in. Then it was Tuesday.

Wednesday evening the doctor lectured me on quantitative
drinking at my age, and said I was well enough to leave, but that if I tried it
again—

I went around to George
^'
s home. A gaunt man with
a thin face came to the door. Then he spoke and I saw it was George Ronson. All
he said was,
^"
Hullo, Walter; come in.
^"
There
wasn't any hope or happiness in his voice. He looked and sounded like a zombi.

I followed him inside, and I said,
^"
George,
buck up. It can
^'
t be that bad. Tell me."

^"
It
^'
s no use, Walter,
^"
he said.
^"
I
^'
m licked. It—it came and got me. I've
got to run it for that forty-hour week whether I want to or not. It—it treats
me like a servant, Walter.
^"

I got him to sit down and talk quietly after a while, and he
explained. He
^'
d gone down to the office as usual Monday morning to
straighten out some financial matters, but he had no intention of going back
into the shop. However, at eight o
^'
clock, he
^'
d heard
something moving out in the back room.

With sudden dread, he
^'
d gone to the door to look
in. The Linotype—George
^'
s eyes were wild as he told me about it—was
moving,
moving toward the door of the office.

He wasn
^'
t quite clear about its exact method of locomotion—later
we found casters—but there it came; slowly at first, but with every inch
gaining in speed and confidence.

Somehow, George knew right away what it wanted. And knew, in
that knowledge, that he was lost. The machine, as soon as he was within sight
of it, stopped moving and began to click and several slugs dropped out into the
stick. Like a man walking to the scaffold, George walked over and read those
lines:
^"
I, ETAOIN SHRDLU, demand—"

For a moment he contemplated flight. But the thought of being
pursued down the main street of town by—No, it just wasn
^'
t
thinkable. And if he got away—as was quite likely unless the machine sprouted
new capabilities, as also seemed quite likely—would it not pick on some other
victim? Or do something worse?

Resignedly, he had nodded acceptance. He pulled the operator
^'
s
chair around in front of the Linotype and began feeding copy into the clipboard
and—as the stick filled with slugs—carrying them over to the type bank. And
shoveling dead metal, or anything else, into the hopper. He didn
^'
t
have to touch the keyboard any longer at all.

And as he did these mechanical duties George told me, it
came to him fully that the Linotype no longer worked for him; he was working
for the Linotype. Why it
wanted
to set type he didn
^'
t know
and it didn
^'
t seem to matter. After all, that was what it was
for,
and probably it was instinctive.

Or, as I suggested and he agreed was possible, it was interested
in learning. And it read and assimilated by the process of typesetting.
Vide:
the effect in terms of direct action of its reading the Socialist books.

We talked until midnight, and got nowhere. Yes, he was going
down to the office again the next morning, and put in another eight hours
setting type—or helping the Linotype do it. He was afraid of what might happen
if he didn
^'
t. And I understood and shared that fear, for the simple
reason that we didn
^'
t
know
what would happen. The face of
danger is brightest when turned so its features cannot be seen.

^"
But, George,
^"
I protested,
^"
there
must be
something.
And I feel partly responsible for this. If I hadn
^'
t
sent you the little guy who rented—
^"

He put his hand on my shoulder. "No, Walter. It was all
my fault because I was greedy. If I
^'
d taken your advice two weeks
ago, I could have destroyed it then. Lord, how glad I'd be now to be flat broke
if only—"

^"
George,
^"
I said again.
^"
There
must be
some
out. We got to figure—
^"

"Till what?
^"
I sighed.
^"
I—I
don
^'
t know. I
^'
ll think it over.
^"

He said,
^"
All right, Walter. And I
^'
ll
do anything you suggest. Anything. I'm afraid, and I'm afraid to try to figure
out just what I'm afraid of—
^"

Back in my room, I didn
^'
t sleep. Not until nearly
dawn, anyway, and then I fell into fitful slumber that lasted until eleven. I
dressed and went in to town to catch George during his lunch hour.

^"
Thought of anything, Walter?
^"
he asked, the minute he saw me. His voice didn't sound hopeful. I shook my
head.

"Then,
^"
he said—and his voice was firm
on top, but with a tremor underneath—
^"
this afternoon is going
to end it one way or the other. Something
^'
s happened.
^"

"What?"

He said,
^"
I
^'
m going back with a
heavy hammer inside my shirt. I think there
^'
s a chance of my getting
it before it can get me. If not—well, I
^'
ll have tried.
^"