You can’t kick on stuff like that. But a ambitious young fourteen-year-old wanted to buy some kid stuff and his pop wouldn’t fork over. He called up a friend to tell his troubles. And his logic says: “If you want to do something and don’t know how to do it—ask your logic!” So this kid punches: “How can I make a lotta money, fast?”
His logic comes through with the simplest, neatest, and the most efficient counterfeitin’ device yet known to science. You see, all the data was in the tank. The logic—since Joe had closed some relays here an’ there in the tank—simply integrated the facts. That’s all. The kid got caught up with three days later, havin’ already spent two thousand credits an’ havin’ plenty more on hand. They hadda time tellin’ his counterfeits from the real stuff, an’ the only way they done it was that he changed his printer, kid fashion, not bein’ able to let somethin’ that was workin’ right alone.
Those are what you might call samples. Nobody knows all that Joe done. But there was the bank president who got humorous when his logic flashed that “Ask your logic” spiel on him, and jestingly asked how to rob his own bank. An’ the logic told him, brief and explicit but good! The bank president hit the ceiling, hollering for cops. There musta been plenty of that sorta thing. There was fifty-four more robberies than usual in the next twenty-four hours, all of them planned astute an’ perfect. Some of ’em they never did figure out how they’d been done. Joe, he’d gone exploring in the tank and closed some relays like a logic is supposed to do—but only when required—and blocked all censor-circuits an’ fixed up this logics service which planned perfect crimes, nourishing an’ attractive meals, counterfeitin’ machines, an’ new industries with a fine impartiality. He musta been plenty happy, Joe must. He was functionin’ swell, buzzin’ along to himself while the Korlanovitch kids were off ridin’ with their ma an’ pa.
They come back at seven o’clock, the kids all happily wore out with their afternoon of fightin’ each other in the car. Their folks put ’em to bed and sat down to rest. They saw Joe’s screen flickerin’ meditative from one subject to another an’ old man Korlanovitch had had enough excitement for one day. He turned Joe off.
An’ at that instant the pattern of relays that Joe had turned on snapped off, all the offers of directive service stopped flashin’ on logic screens everywhere, an’ peace descended on the earth.
For everybody else. But for me—Laurine come to town. I have often thanked Gawd fervent that she didn’t marry me when I thought I wanted her to. In the intervenin’ years she had progressed. She was blonde an’ fatal to begin with. She had got blonder and fataler an’ had had four husbands and one acquittal for homicide an’ had acquired a air of enthusiasm and self-confidence. That’s just a sketch of the background. Laurine was not the kinda former girlfriend you like to have turning up in the same town with your wife. But she came to town, an’ Monday morning she tuned right into the middle of Joe’s second spasm of activity.
The Korlanovitch kids had turned him on again. I got these details later and kinda pieced ’em together. An’ every logic in town was dutifully flashin’ a notice, “If you want to do something and don’t know how to do it—ask your logic!” every time they was turned on for use. More’n that, when people punched for the morning news, they got a full account of the previous afternoon’s doin’s. Which put ’em in a frame of mind to share in the party. One bright fella demands, “How can I make a perpetual motion machine?” And his logic sputters a while an’ then comes up with a set-up usin’ the Brownian movement to turn little wheels. If the wheels ain’t bigger’n a eighth of an inch they’ll turn, all right, an’ practically it’s perpetual motion. Another one asks for the secret of transmuting metals. The logic rakes back in the data plates an’ integrates a strictly practical answer. It does take so much power that you can’t make no profit except on radium, but that pays off good. An’ from the fact that for a coupla years to come the police were turnin’ up new and improved jimmies, knob-claws for gettin’ at safe-innards, and all-purpose keys that’d open any known lock—why—there must have been other inquirers with a strictly practical viewpoint. Joe done a lot for technical progress!
But he done more in other lines. Educational, say. None of my kids are old enough to be int’rested, but Joe bypassed all censor-circuits because they hampered the service he figured logics should give humanity. So the kids an’ teen-agers who wanted to know what comes after the bees an’ flowers found out. And there is certain facts which men hope their wives won’t do more’n suspect, an’ those facts are just what their wives are really curious about. So when a woman dials: “How can I tell if Oswald is true to me?” and her logic tells her—you can figure out how many rows got started that night when the men come home!
All this while Joe goes on buzzin’ happy to himself, showin’ the Korlanovitch kids the animated funnies with one circuit while with the others he remote-controls the tank so that all the other logics can give people what they ask for and thereby raise merry hell.
An’ then Laurine gets onto the new service. She turns on the logic in her hotel room, prob’ly to see the week’s style-forecast. But the logic says, dutiful: “If you want to do something and don’t know how to do it—ask your logic!” So Laurine prob’ly looks enthusiastic—she would!—and tries to figure out something to ask. She already knows all about everything she cares about—ain’t she had four husbands and shot one?—so I occur to her. She knows this is the town I live in. So she punches, “How can I find Ducky?”
O.K., guy! But that is what she used to call me. She gets a service question. “Is Ducky known by any other name?” So she gives my regular name. And the logic can’t find me. Because my logic ain’t listed under my name on account of I am in Maintenance and don’t want to be pestered when I’m home, and there ain’t any data plates on code-listed logics, because the codes get changed so often—like a guy gets plastered an’ tells a redhead to call him up, an’ on gettin’ sober hurriedly has the code changed before she reaches his wife on the screen.
Well! Joe is stumped. That’s prob’ly the first question logics service hasn’t been able to answer. “How can I find Ducky?” Quite a problem! So Joe broods over it while showin’ the Korlanovitch kids the animated comic about the cute little boy who carries sticks of dynamite in his hip pocket an’ plays practical jokes on everybody. Then he gets the trick. Laurine’s screen suddenly flashes:
“Logics special service will work upon your question. Please punch your logic designation and leave it turned on. You will be called back.”
Laurine is merely mildly interested, but she punches her hotel-room number and has a drink and takes a nap. Joe sets to work. He has been given a idea.
My wife calls me at Maintenance and hollers. She is fit to be tied. She says I got to do something. She was gonna make a call to the butcher shop. Instead of the butcher or even the “If you want to do something” flash, she got a new one. The screen says, “Service question: What is your name?” She is kinda puzzled, but she punches it. The screen sputters an’ then says: “Secretarial Service Demonstration! You—” It reels off her name, address, age, sex, coloring, the amounts of all her charge accounts in all the stores, my name as her husband, how much I get a week, the fact that I’ve been pinched three times—twice was traffic stuff, and once for a argument I got in with a guy—and the interestin’ item that once when she was mad with me she left me for three weeks an’ had her address changed to her folks’ home. Then it says, brisk: “Logics Service will hereafter keep your personal accounts, take messages, and locate persons you may wish to get in touch with. This demonstration is to introduce the service.” Then it connects her with the butcher.
But she don’t want meat, then. She wants blood. She calls me.
“If it’ll tell me all about myself,” she says, fairly boilin’, “it’ll tell anybody else who punches my name! You’ve got to stop it!”
“Now, now, honey!” I says. “I didn’t know about all this! It’s new! But they musta fixed the tank so it won’t give out information except to the logic where a person lives!”
“Nothing of the kind!” she tells me, furious. “I tried! And you know that Blossom woman who lives next door! She’s been married three times and she’s forty-two years old and she says she’s only thirty! And Mrs. Hudson’s had her husband arrested four times for nonsupport and once for beating her up. And—”
“Hey!” I says. “You mean the logic told you this?”
“Yes!” she wails. “It will tell anybody anything! You’ve got to stop it! How long will it take?”
“I’ll call up the tank,” I says. “It can’t take long.”
“Hurry!” she says, desperate, “before somebody punches my name! I’m going to see what it says about that hussy across the street.”
She snaps off to gather what she can before it’s stopped. So I punch for the tank and I get this new “What is your name?” flash. I got a morbid curiosity and I punch my name, and the screen says: “Were you ever called Ducky?” I blink. I ain’t got no suspicions. I say, “Sure!” And the screen says, “There is a call for you.”
Bingo! There’s the inside of a hotel room and Laurine is reclinin’ asleep on the bed. She’d been told to leave her logic turned on an’ she done it. It is a hot day and she is trying to be cool. I would say that she oughta not suffer from the heat. Me, being human, I do not stay as cool as she looks. But there ain’t no need to go into that.
