Hill Ernest

Atrophy

Ernest Hill

Atrophy

Take automation to its logical conclusion and what kind of work is there left for mankind to do — except press a few buttons? But what happens to the worker when the machines go wrong?

* * *

There was a tweet in the upper register and the blues were blurred. Either the blues were blurred or his eyes were still clouded with an opaque residue of sleep. Or the angle. The Tilt. His hand slipped languidly from under the fibre-glass coverlet, pressed, and the set-right register moved forward a notch. Two notches. Better. Some Tilt. The feet should be slightly higher than the head, the body at an angle of five degrees to the horizontal. The angle of relaxation. Certainly the blues were now bluer but the tweet was still pronounced. Either actually an electronic distortion or subjectively, a jangle discordant with a brain rhythm surge. The programme was a bore anyway. Or was it? He had hardly noticed the programme. Only the tweet and the register. All programmes were a bore if it came to that. Why watch? No reason at all. He activated his alpha rhythm and the set switched itself into a dead thing of ten foot screen and chromium suspended from the ceiling.

A doze. Thank God it was Wednesday. Every Monday morning you think Wednesday will never come. But it does. It does. Today. Eleven o’clock. A doze and a twiddle of the alpha rhythm around the tea-maker relay. Tea. A bath. Another nap. Perhaps a stimulator and a walk round the park. Tea and a tranquillizer and the evening programme. A retina and receptivity stimulator.

“Elvin!”

Perhaps something more active. A game of gin rummy with anyone gin-rummy minded enough to play. A space cruise in the activated planetarium. Lay back and let the stars slip by. Later perhaps a night-club in an atmosphere of nudity and mild narcotics. An erotic film, lips a-quiver and bared navel nerve-ends on the sensor pads.

“Elvin!”

No. Eroticism was a bore. Stimulation. Stimulation. Stimulation. No one ever did anything very much. Electronically — not actually. A bore. It was all there in the sensor pads. Why carry it farther? One always thought one would. Why? Why go through the emotional upset and possible degradation of a first-hand affair that never approached the poignancy of the sensors? Much better a taste-bud stimulant and a bottle or two of anything at all. No need for expense or the fatigue of selection.

Although…? The red fluid. It would be fun one day to

try a sip or two of the pale red stuff with unactivated taste-buds. A real experiment. What would it taste like? Vinegar, probably with a dash of meths. Who cared? Taste was subjective like first degree sex in the safety of the secondhand. Like alcoholism.

“Elvin!”

Taste-buds. Yes. Tea. A taste-bud stimulant and a cup of tea. Relax. Activate the alpha rhythm. Two-beat-one. The tea-twiddler. Might as well be water, of course. But it was tea — or something like it. Did one really save effort with the alpha rhythm twiddle? The effort of activation almost equalled the effort of knob-depression. Oh, well! The makers knew best!

“Elvin!”

Oh, God! She’s there. Standing by the bed, arms akimbo and tired eyes contemptuous. Why doesn’t she go away? Or sleep? Or twiddle her brain rhythm round the dishwasher. Or activate the waste-incinerator. Or something.

“Get up!” she said.

“Why?” he asked. “For goodness sake, why? It’s Wednesday. I’ve had a hard week. Leave me alone.”

She threw back the fibre-glass. Switched off the temperature regular with a flick of scarcely conscious brain rhythm surge. Two-beat-two.

“You’ll atrophy,” she said. “That’s why!”

Of course he wouldn’t atrophy. He had been thinking consciously and logically of all sorts of things. What to do. When to do it. You don’t think consciously and logically if you atrophy. You slip into a sort of dreamy torpor and the State knocks on the door in a white coat. Rather pleasant to be taken away by the State. No need to plan the day. To think. To dream.

Gavin had atrophied. They jolted his reception every ten minutes through the electrodes in each temple. He still couldn’t differentiate between dreams and waking. Couldn’t think. But his receptivity quotient registered green lights at every impulse and that was something. Nasty.

“I won’t atrophy,” he said.

“You haven’t used IT for weeks,” she snapped. “You’re half-comatose already.”

“I’m not!” He protested.

“Quite apart from that — there’s the bonus.”

She was right, of course. He had fallen well behind schedule and it was only eight weeks till Christmas. Forty shopping days. Forty thinking days.

“All right,” he said, “I’ll have an hour with IT this afternoon.”

“Start now!”

He was a little bit afraid of her. The only thing in life that meant very much to him. Positive impact. Standing there with tired eyes, but clear. Steady hands. Tranquil without tranquillizers. Stimulating without stimulants. Cold. Hostile. Scornful. Beautiful with her breasts bare and the white line of clavicle showing where her ribs ended and shoulder began.

“All right,” he said, as the water boiled and gurgled over the injected tea-bag. “A bowl of Munchies and I’ll give IT two hours.”

She tossed her head and turned on her heel in the coordinated impatience of departure.

“Meryl,” he asked, plaintively, “kiss me!”

She glanced at the dials of the sexometer. Her eyes were cold.

“There’s another two days yet!”

“I mean,” he said, “just — kiss me!”

She brushed his lips with hers in a fleeting sporadic condescension of nut-shell texture. He sighed. Two days before the sexometer buzzed. “Thursday-Friday” he counted on his fingers.

IT was a cool, green, pastel shade of dials and lights and buttons. There were no alpha rhythm relays. IT stimulated activity. IT’s buttons were manually depressed. Elvin checked the cards. 132 to qualify for standard bonus. 144 with a minimum of 24 IT-Approvals for 25 % INCREMENT. All IT-Approvals over 48 qualified for bonus-and-half. The maximum. So far, he had 96 cards and 2 Approvals. Meryl was right. He must think. Now. Or atrophy. Puffing a cheroot as an aid to concentration, he sat between the chromium rails, donned the head-piece with encephalic sensors and activated the “On” button with a thin, white finger. IT’s green light glowed.

“No smoking! No narcotics! No stimulation!” IT ordered.

Elvin stubbed the cheroot. His hand trembled. Think! Stick to the formula! Choose a subject for thought— unrewarding. Unconnected with work or sex. Develop the unrewarding thought to its final conclusion. Look for IT-Approval.

“Damn the Unions,” he thought. “They should never have agreed to a minimum of 132 per annum for standard bonus. Ridiculously high. How many thinking days were there in a year? Not as many as all that.” A red light glowed and IT’s Thought-interruption registered as a “Phit! Phit! Phit!”

He depressed the “Correction” knob.

“Random thinking must be corrected. State proposition and articulate!” IT ordered.

“I haven’t started yet,” he protested.

‘Think!” IT ordered.

“Damn the Unions,” he thought. “And the management. They don’t have to do this. IT is only for the Workers.”

“Phit! Phit! Phit! A proposition containing an expletive is a random digression!”

“Give me a chance,” he complained. “I haven’t thought of a proposition yet!”

‘Think!” The red light glowed.

He was about to answer “Rats!” But this was probably an expletive and a double correction would automatically register non-Approval on this, his 97th card.

“Cats!” he said, in a moment of inspiration.

To his surprise, the red light transfused into green. It glowed brightly.

“Go ahead!”

“Cats” was as good a subject as any. Simple really.

“A cat,” he said, “is a small furry creature with four legs, a head at one end and a tail at the other.”

“Phit! Phit! Phit!”

“What is it now!” He depressed the “Correction” button. How many corrections was this? How many did IT allow? He had forgotten.

“Description is correct, but mode of expression borders on to the facetious. Generic term for four-legged creatures required.”

“Quadrupeds!”

The green light glowed brightly. He was pleased that IT approved. Must do better.

“A cat is a quadruped, furry and with a tail. It catches mice.”

The green light did not waver. What else did cats do?

“It drinks milk and sleeps by the fire.”

“Phit! Phit! Phit!”

“Bother!” He depressed the button.

“A cat cannot drink milk while it is asleep by the fire. Define the intervals!”

“When it is hungry it feeds. When it is thirsty it drinks milk. It sleeps a great deal when it is neither hungry nor thirsty.”

Green. Who would have thought that there was so much to think about cats? But was there enough to say? Barely twenty seconds had elapsed and the thought process must last for ten minutes to qualify for the “completion” stamp, Bra with Approval. What else?

“They are cuddly things.” The green was less bright. Probably the mode of expression had earned distaste. Was there a better word for “cuddly”? He wanted IT to think well of him. Quite apart from the bonus.

“They accept affection!” Much brighter.

“The ancient Egyptians worshipped them as gods.” Interruption.

“All cats, or some cats?”

“Tabbies, I think.” Green. Twenty-five per cent Approval.

“Cats were originally wild. They lived by hunting. They were fierce. Modern cats have a much better life.”

“Phit! Phit! Phit!”

“Why?”

IT was being really cantankerous today. Just when he was getting into his stride and really thinking about cats IT interrupted him with this unnecessary interrogative. “Why? Well, why did they have a better life?”

“They are happier,” he said.

“Why?”

Must avoid expletives. Must avoid non-Approval. Argue with IT, by all means but never let IT rile you. That was emotional disturbance and non-approved.

“A wild cat was sometimes hungry. It hunted in all weathers, in rain and snow, to bring back to its litter raw, uncooked game, mice and moor-hen chicks and moles. A modern cat sits by the warm-air vent and has good processed food fed to it.”

“Well?” IT asked.

“So the modern cat is happier.”

“Phit! Phit! Phit!”

“Isn’t it?” he asked, plaintively.

“Think!” IT ordered.

His thought-train had reached a dead end. Of course it was happier if things were done for it. It was self-evident. Why do when one can have done? True? Wasn’t it? Stick to the formula. If in doubt, dismiss preconceived ideas from the mind and live in the thought train. It said so in the instructions. Get inside your subject. Imagine yourself a cat.

“A cat is a hunter. It is happier hunting!”

That was it. Green light glowing. Of course. Odd that to do should be more happiness provoking than to be done to.

“In the wild state, it felt pleasure and satisfaction in the achievement of killing and feeding. In the modern state it sleeps. Why? Because it is bored.”

An electronic note. Spring! IT-Approval. Pleasure and satisfaction in achievement. A stamped card. Ninety-seven cards and 3 Approvals. He felt like a hunting cat.

“Meryl! Meryl! I’ve got an Approval!”

“About time too!”

If only she had shared his elation, lived with him, thought with him. If only she had said “That was good, Elvin!” Why should she? It wasn’t much really. Nothing to hoist a flag about. Just 3 Approvals in a year.

“I wish,” he thought, “I wish she would help me.”

* * *

The week-end passed slowly. One ate. One drank. One went to the Sensories. A mildly erotic adventure story set among potted palms with a south sea island back-cloth. The sensory fear of the hunted, bullets whining down the companionway, cold water splash of a ship-wreck, tired hands blistered on the oars. The salty, warm breath of the south seas’ sun-ray and brine-exuder. Meryl had hardly spoken as they hovered to the doors, found their seats and set the suction pads tingling around their navels. His soft, white fingers curled around the image of the oar, grasping, pulling in time to the back-bending of the seamen before and behind. Splash! Tug! Out! Heave!

Oddly enough, as the torrid kiss of palm-filtered moonlight enchantment was answered by the trembling soft lip parting of desire’s response, he was conscious of a mental rejection. Rejection, not of satiation, addiction, boredom, but a strange dissatisfaction with subjectivity and a desire to do. To tear off the pads and clasp Meryl to him, then and there. Useless, of course. Her lips would not part and respond and tremble with a warm quiver of fulsome surrender. They would freeze into a thin line of dry, coriaceous rejection. Better far the subjective. The warm wind from the sea rippling the filmy texture of the diaphanous sari-like garment slipping from the south-sea shoulder. The lash of the southern moon on a coruscating safety-pin. He slipped back into subjection.

Thursday. Friday. The buzz of the sexometer in the early hours. Co-incidental with the cyclic rhythms. Electronics infallible. The maker’s guarantee was proof incontrovertible of infallibility. There was no other proof. The inert, submissive, unresponsive compliance of the body gave no indication of its rhythm apices. Meryl yawned.

He was almost glad when it was again Monday. Three sessions with IT and 2 more IT-Approvals over the weekend had elated him with a half-formed wish to do. Even the brain rhythm twiddle round the starter relay, three-beat-four, was action. The motors hummed, the Aeolus 125 rose on its cushion of dust-laying mist ejection and swept down the wide service road into the arterial air-stream. In ten minutes he was parked on the third tier of the No. 19 hangar and was gliding through the travelator tunnel into No. 1 control. Work again. An anxiety surge. A tranquillizer. Why? There was no cause for concern. The control looked the same as ever. Little lights flashing. Batteries of buttons twinkling in the fluorescent lighting. Igor yawning and ready to go. Amphetamine mist emission.

“Morning,” he said. An attempt at animation. Igor’s dull eyes met his for a moment, uncomprehending. Opaque. He nodded slightly. Put on his hat. Tossed back a stimulator, collected his iron ration dispenser and disappeared, drooping like a tired peony, down the travelator. Elvin took his place at the panels. The two lines of lights flickering on the semi-circular half cartridge from arm length left to arm length right and arm length above and below.

A 1,2,3,4. A 4,5,6,7. A 11,10,9,8. Miss one. A 19,18,17. Bs synchronous. 1005 hours. They should reverse in a moment or two. A 4,3,2,1. An inspiration to alertness. Bs still synchronous thank goodness. A 16,17,18,19. A 2,3.4.

Where was A 1? A 1 had not functioned. A red light over A 1. Reactor chamber. Reactor wild. Check Foreman informed. Check reactor doors closed — A 2. Hose nozzles functioning. Alarm. Fire brigade. Radiation disposal squad. Military. Police. Defence organizations alerted. He glanced at the Foreman. All under control. The “Foreman Activated” light glowing. All systems responding. Alert! The videophone buzzed. Waldorf, the fire chief, of course.

“Say!” he shouted. “This an A or a B?”

“It’s all right,” Elvin told him. “It’s an A.”

“You might have let me know,” Waldorf grumbled. “No sense in us all breaking our necks, is there?”

“Sorry,” Elvin apologized, “I was just going to see you up.” Physicists contacted. Management informed. Evacuation under way. Radiation quotient—10 milliPennies.

For ten minutes Elvin sat in an agony of concentration, checking the light sequences against the Foreman’s indicators. There would be an intentional error somewhere. There always was. A 18 dead. Foreman checked. 19,20,21- still activated. Foreman approved. 35–35. 36–36. 37–37. 41 dead. He had it! He had it! Foreman checked 41 live. He stabbed his finger on the “Management alert” button. Dubois, the Personnel Director, pale and podgy-faced, appeared on the screen.

“Faulty Foreman, sir!” Elvin stammered. “A41 dead. Foreman checked live. Ackled on full sequence but no ackle on 41.”

“OK, Elvin, good work! Re-activate!” The image faded and Dubois settled comfortably back on the couch under a dome of lights and knobs and micro-screens. To concentrate. To Personnel Control. Dubois was a Thinker.

Elvin lit a cheroot, vastly pleased with himself. “Good work!” Personnel had said. He, Elvin, had done good work. Dubois had said so. A very fine face, had Dubois. What was the rest of him like? Short and tubby probably. Curved back, shaped to the couch. Great responsibility. Dubois was a Thinker.

Elvin pressed the “Re-activate” and the lights travelled in their usual sequence. Buzz! Waldorf appeared on the video.

“All over?” he asked, amiably enough.

“All over!” Elvin told him.

“Lot of flapdoodle!” Waldorf grumbled. “One of these days, you chaps will have a B and we shall forget to come. Then you’ll all look silly.”

“I don’t dream these things up,” Elvin explained, wearily. “They happen to me just the same as to you. I only work here.”

“You know it’s an A.” Waldorf complained. “Why not reactivate and leave us in peace?”

“And lose my bonus?” Elvin asked sarcastically.

“What do you make in that fortress, anyway?” Waldorf was curious.

“Make?”

“Well, you must make something!”

Elvin supposed that they did. After all, everyone made something or other. Or did something. Like despatch along the residence supply tubes. Or broke things down. What did they make? Someone had told him once, long ago, at his first interview. Fresh from Tech and with some interest outside the Specialities. Zirconium something. What did one make with zirconium?

“Well?” Waldorf probed.

“Zirconiums,” he said.

“Oh!” Waldorf was satisfied Obviously, if they made zirconiums, zirconiums were used for something or other. His interest faded and he returned to his fire-floats.

No more As. Thank goodness, no Bs. He had read of Bs. In the headlines. No one ever read farther than the headlines. There was a B every now and again in the headlines. Once there had been a B 1. Somewhere. A reactor wild. It had sounded quite frightening. An operator running over the routine formulae, but knowing that it was really it. A B! Imagine a B 1 and a faulty Foreman. A non-ackle like the A 41. What exactly would happen? What in fact was a wild reactor? He shuddered. He had no idea. Only the routine light sequences. Foreman checks and the knowledge that the rescue services were automatically contacted, even on an A. Only the warning news flash on the public screens was withheld until the B. Contact was made, but the vocal tape was non-ackled. Panic avoidance.

It had been quite a day. He was glad when Gallen, his relief appeared promptly at 1600 on the travelator, yawning, puppet-like, half comatose.

“We had an A!”

Gallen nodded abstractedly and settled at the panels, his eyes blinking in synchronous relation to the nictating lights. Elvin left. Poor old Gallen! He would certainly atrophy. Even constant sequence change and A alarms could not hold his attention much longer. Had Dubois noticed? On the Workers’ Welfare Monitor? Probably. Oh, well! None of his business, anyway. Home and tell Meryl about the A. Excited. Animated for once. Surely that would please Meryl. It was what she had always wanted. Life. A flicker of interest in the eyes. Conversation. About something.

* * *

The lift swept him up to the 27th floor. Home. The pad. Empty. The positive emptiness of nothing that had been something. Or very nearly.

My dear Elvin [he read]. I cannot stand it any longer. The daze. The monotony. The dreary waiting for the sexometer to buzz. I don’t suppose you will notice I have gone. Not for some days at least. It buzzes again tomorrow at 1815hours. But when your disinterested eyes finally, by accident, light upon this note, I shall be far away. I hope happier. As happy as anyone can be in this dead, weary world. I have left you for a Thinker.

He had never felt such emotion before. Only once, vaguely, long ago, with Carmine. He had responded dutifully to the buzz. With animation almost. He had been younger then. He had kissed her quite passionately and there had been a dead thing beneath him. Carmine had atrophied. He sat, rocking his body, his face in his hands. A strange wetness oozed between his fingers. He looked at his hands. They were wet. Tears. Streaming down his cheeks. He had forgotten tears. Even the motion of the sensors had never triggered such a response. The simulation of sensor weeping was subjective. You felt the weeping but the tears were dry and latent in their ducts.

His hand stopped over the tranquillizer dispenser. He didn’t want to be tranquillized. In this, the hour of his agony, he wanted to feel, to sense the vivid ache of his loneliness. To cry. To feel the salt rush of the tears on his cheeks. To know that it was he who was there, feeling, weeping, lonely, alone.

“Nothing else meant anything,” he thought. “Only Meryl. This pad is an empty box. A coffin. A casket for the ashes of what had been just a little more than an ash itself. A something.”

No escape. Nothing to do. No dead-eyed woman to take her place. Four dead eyes between four dead walls. A new sexometer tuned to a new rhythm. No. Never. But what else could he do? Narcotics and the sensories, bud-stimulants and the pale red fluid?

“I’m so lonely,” he groaned. Lonely. Lonely. Lonely. An empty bed at an angle of five degrees to the horizontal. Taste bud tea and the programmes. There was no one to whom he could talk. There was no one who could generate a flicker of interest in his problems, smaller and less poignant than the problems of the programmes. No one at all.

There was IT. The respect proferred to the wiser, the cleverer, the great. To these one turned in times of trouble. It was not IT’s function, of course. Comment on emotional outpourings. But somehow, IT understood. A great IT. A greater IT than any of the other ten million ITs in ten million other Workers’ pads.

“Work!” said IT.

That was the answer, of course. Work. He had really enjoyed the A alarm, the responsibility, real responsibility, even if only simulated real. The happening of something. But how did one work? At what? His shift was 1000 till 1600 hours. Fourteen hours to wait. To wait, sleepless and weeping. Swop with the night shift? Oppel! 2200 till 0400 hours. Oppel was only slightly comatose. He would listen to reason and agree. Elvin saw him up on the video. Oppel, disturbed at his programme viewing was hostile, testy, un-forthcoming and conventional.

“You can’t swop shifts,” he said. “You are conditioned to 1000 till 1600. Your efficiency is impaired if you change sequence and rhythms.”

“Please!” Elvin begged. “Just this once as a favour. We can both do the job well enough, conditioned or not.”

“Why?” Oppel asked.

“Meryl’s left me,” Elvin’s lip quivered.

“It happens,” Oppel’s eyes strayed back to his screen. They lost focus.

“Please, Oppel!”

“I’d miss my programmes and see yours. I don’t know your programmes.”

“I’ll do your shift as well as mine and you can watch both.”

“Twelve hours in a day!”

“It’s all right. I could do it. No one would know. I’ll press your button instead of mine.”

“Oh! All right!”

“Thanks Oppel!” But Oppel had already faded. Elvin could only hope that he would remember. The habit of 2200 till 0400 is hard to break. He would forget and press in at the 2200 tweet.

But Oppel apparently did remember. There was no Oppel on the travelator. Punctually on the tweet of 2200, Elvin stepped from the tunnel, nodded vacantly to the evening shift, who passed from sight without a glance of non-recognition. One Worker was very like another.

It was a long, dull shift. The lights moved in their accustomed sequence change, electronic notes sounded at intervals, demanding the register of presence, assimilation, response. He coped. He ackled. Nothing, apart from the sign-on button, demanded registration of personality and that had been simple. A depression of the “Oppel”. No As. No Bs.

0400 came far too soon. It was surprising how quickly time passed in the necessity of application. He could not face the return home. To the empty pad. To the pad where Meryl was not. At the tweet of 0400, he begged Oppel’s relief to let him do the morning shift. The relief was 75%comatose and gave no trouble. Elvin turned him about, put his hat in his hand and his iron ration dispenser under his arm and guided him back to the travelator. He returned, believing it was 1000.

The morning passed uneventfully, 1000 tweeted and he at last pressed his own “Elvin” button. He was himself again. Dubois had not noticed, if he ever used the Welfare Monitor. He was punctual on his own shift. One face was the same as another. Stay alert and the day would have passed. Twenty-four hours between him and the jolt of last night’s emotion. Time to assess. To re-assess. To think. Whether to fight back somehow, or slip into the comatose and quietly atrophy.

Stay alert! A stimulator!

A 1,2,3,4. A 8,7,6,5. Miss one. A 13,14,15,16. Below the A lights, the Bs flashed in synchronous unison. A/B 17,18,19,20. “I love her.” A/B 24,23,22,21. “Meryl come back to me!” 36,37,38,39. “I won’t atrophy, Meryl, I promise I won’t atrophy.” 48,47,46,45. “Come back to me, Meryl!” Reverse the sequence and back. A 2,3,4. A 8,7,6,5. “Meryl come back….” What was that? The A 1 missed. The B 1 missed. Warning red over A and B. A B 1? Reactor wild? It couldn’t be, not now on his shift. Tiredness and the stimulator? He rubbed his eyes. The red lights still glowed. My God! It was a B 1. Inform the Foreman. Foreman activated. Check reactors closed — B 2. Reactor doors still open. The Foreman! Activate B2! Oh no! The Foreman didn’t ackle on B 2. A faulty Foreman!

He screamed at the Foreman, “Ackle B 2!” The. Foreman had missed. B 2 still red. Hose nozzles functioning. Alarm. Fire brigade. Radiation disposal squad. Military. Police. Defence organizations alerted. All in order. Reactor doors still open.

“What do I do?” he screamed at the Foreman. What should he do? Routine. Inform management. Dubois. No— not Dubois, it wouldn’t be Dubois this time. This wasn’t a personnel job. This was it. This was a real B 1. Whose face was that on the screen. A physicist? An electronics director? None of his business.

“Sir! B 1 alarm. Foreman faulty. B 2 check missed!”

The face on the screen raised dull unseeing eyes, holding for a moment a glimmer of partial animation before the thick lids fell and the flaccid mouth parted in a sigh of uncomprehending weariness, sagged and dropped open. A trickle of saliva glistened on the chin.

“He’s atrophied!”

This Thinker, this minion of management — he’s atrophied! It couldn’t be. Not a Thinker. Or could it? What was this vacant, drooling shell, this vacuous inanity? A Thinker who had thought. Once, for a while — how long ago? Years of flawless automation, years of waiting for the fault that never came, the fault that should claim the focus of a thought. Years since a B of any sort, a B 1, perhaps, never. And the Thinkers had no IT. IT was for the Workers. A device of Management and Unions to stimulate some animation in the ceaseless checking of the automated flow. To stave off atrophy.

What was he doing, thinking and speculating on the atrophy of a physicist, an automotive engineer, whatever the Thinker was or had been? A faulty Foreman, a wild reactor, reactor doors open and himself — a Worker. Who cared? What was a wild reactor and why should the doors be shut? He was a Worker, why should he care? He did care. The evacuation! My God! Had the message gone out? He had heard no message from the faulty Foreman, from that flashing expanse of non-ackle. What was the message? Evacuate an area of ten miles radius with all speed. Anti-radiation precautions to be taken in a fifty mile radius. The disposal squads could not warn everyone — it must go out on the screens. Radiation level? Radiation level 120 milliPennies. God what a lot of milliPennies. Whatever milliPennies were. The message had got to go out. The A was flashing on the Foreman check but the B was dead. Damn the Foreman! Think, Elvin, think!

Long ago at the Tech, what had they said about manual? There was always a manual somewhere. What did a manual look like? What would it look like? What did it do, or what did you do to it? Something to speak into, like a toy microphone, somewhere under cameras for the visual. Where? Where else but on the Foreman? He ran to the Foreman, to the maze of lights and knobs and buttons, relays and microscreens. Somewhere there must be a device that called for the grasp of a hand. A lever switch. In all his life, he had never pulled a switch. And there it was. There they all were. A lever switch, a tag marked “Manual” and a microphone. For a moment, he hesitated. For a Worker to question the Foreman was unthinkable. Only management could override the Foreman and Management never did. To tinker with a Foreman was worse than sacrilege. No one ever tinkered with a Foreman.

“But,” he thought, “he’s faulty. He didn’t ackle. And the Management has atrophied.”

A hundred thousand people like himself in nearby pads and a radiation level of 120 milliPennies. He shuddered.

He pulled the lever and the Foreman died. Not a light flashed, not a needle quivered. The control room was empty, silent, a tomb with a dead Foreman and a half-dead Worker. Manual as never before. What now? A message must go out. He picked up the microphone and the cameras swivelled their focus on him. That much ackled.

“1, 2, 3, 4.” He tested. “1, 2, 3, 4,” boomed from the video-screens. He saw himself in every corner of the room. White and pasty-faced, limp sagging shoulders, insubstantial knees. A yellow boiler-suited, anti-radiation clad Worker like any other. A Worker who had just killed a Foreman.

“Emergency!” He shouted. “Wild reactor at No. 129. Map Reference H67. B 346. Radiation level 120 milliPennies. It is urgent that an area of ten miles in radius from 129 should be evacuated immediately. Anti-radiation precautions should be taken in an area of fifty miles radius. Your anti-radiation squads in the area will advise you. This is Elvin speaking — a Worker in the control. The Management has atrophied.”

Waldorf was on the video demanding to know if it was an A. Probably the disposal and evacuation squads were taking their time, none caring, none knowing that this was it.

“It’s a B!” he shouted.

Waldorf’s cheeks blanched visibly as he rummaged for his anti-rad helmet. “My leggings!” he moaned. “I’ve come without my leggings. We all have!”

“Your legs will drop off,” Elvin told him tersely and returned to the microphone. It was imperative to broadcast continually. Many of the Workers and perhaps Thinkers too, would be comatose. Only constant repetition would reach them. Over and over again on the screens until it registered. Till some semblance of urgency rubbed off.

“This is Elvin, Worker in 129, map reference H67. B 346…”

For how long he continued to broadcast, he never knew. Time lost its meaning in the exhilaration of doing. He had repeated his message at least a hundred times before he became aware of a figure standing by the travelator, watching him. A short spare man in the antique dress of a pre-automotive age. Black coat, black trousers with white stripes, a bowler hat. An umbrella. Elvin recognized at once the symbol of Higher Management. A common figure on the programmes, but rarely seen in life itself. Higher Management in person!

“Sir!” he said.

“You are Elvin?” the Higher Management asked quietly.

“Yes, sir!”

“I am the Managing Director.”

He had heard of Managing Directors. They were unbelievably important, very near to the top. Higher than High. Much higher than Dubois. He trembled.

“Tell me what happened.” Elvin was near to tears. The strain of thinking, of acting and now of cross-question was damping his last feeble rhythm to an intermittent flutter.

“There was B 1. The reactor doors stayed open — B 2. The Foreman missed the check. The A linked with the screens but the B missed the ackle.”

“So you found the manual and killed the Foreman?”

“Did I do right, sir?”

“Sit down, Elvin.” The Managing Director steered him to the chair with the ferrule of his umbrella. “As it happens you did not do right. There was no B 1. The fault was a moth settling on a relay in the alarm circuits, unfortunately also affecting the radiation readings. But the Foreman was certainly faulty and the Management, as I have since ascertained, was indeed comatose.”

“Then it was all for nothing?” Elvin began to sob.

“No, Elvin. It was not for nothing. You thought. I am amazed to find a Thinker among my Workers. Not only this company, but the entire outside world has far too few Thinkers left. Too few to waste them here in the control room. There will be a new job for you tomorrow, Elvin. You have watched your last light sequence.”

“As a Thinker?” Elvin breathed.

“You are now Management,” the Managing Director directed. “Tomorrow, you will report to me. Tomorrow you will continue thinking.”

He patted Elvin on the shoulder with his umbrella and disappeared down the travelator. 1600 tweeted and Elvin’s relief arrived with two Thinkers to tinker with the Foreman.

“All quiet?” asked the relief.

“All quiet,” Elvin told him, a song in his heart and a dizzy surge in his alpha rhythm. He ran to the travelator, eyes animated, eager to go. Home to the pad. A Thinker! Management!

“A Thinker! Management!” He told himself over and over again the cycle of the day’s happenings. The B 1. His thought processes. His killing of the Foreman. His broadcast. The Higher Management. He couldn’t wait to get home. To tell Meryl.

Meryl. Suddenly the elation died within him. There was no Meryl. No one at all to tell. What use to see up his fellow travellers on the video, pour out his excitement into their dull ears and meet the uncomprehending stares of their inanimate eyes? No. There was no one to tell. No one who could generate a flickering ten seconds interest to share his programme from real life, live with him the drama of a B 1, a faulty Foreman and an avuncular Higher Management.

His eyes were tired again as he reached the pad door, twiddled his alpha rhythm around the lock code relay. 17 beat 3.

There was a ripple of fabric inside, the undulation of nylon tights, a swift pert bobbing of breasts and Meryl’s arms were around his neck.

“Elvin! I heard you! You thought!”

“Yes,” he said, dazed and giddy. “I think I did.”

“Elvin, I’ve come back to you!”

She led him to the bed at an angle of five degrees to the horizontal and supported him as he sagged on to the fibre-glass. Her kiss was the warm, soft, salty tremble of the south seas under the potted palms. It was urgent. Demanding. He turned his head and looked at the dials.

“There’s another two hours…” he said.

“Damn the sexometer,” she whispered. “I know my own rhythms best.” It was good to be a Thinker.

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Hill Ernest Atrophy

Ernest Hill Atrophy