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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Joy Ride, by Mark Meadows
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Joy Ride
+
+Author: Mark Meadows
+
+Illustrator: Dick Francis
+
+Release Date: April 12, 2010 [EBook #31961]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOY RIDE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="tr"><p class="center">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+<p class="center">This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction December 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.</p></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img class="img1" src="images/cover.jpg" width="400" height="525" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1>joy ride</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>By MARK MEADOWS</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Men or machines&mdash;something had to give&mdash;though not
+necessarily one or the other. Why not both?</p></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">(historian's note:</span> <i>The following statements are extracted from
+depositions taken by the Commission of Formal Inquiry appointed by the
+Peloric Rehabilitation Council, a body formed as a provisional
+government in the third month of the Calamity</i>.)</p>
+
+
+<h2>1</h2>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m1.jpg" alt="M" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+<p>y name is Andrews, third assistant vice president in charge of
+maintenance for Cybernetic Publishers.</p>
+
+<p>It is not generally known that all the periodical publications for the
+world were put out by Cybernetics. We did not conceal the monopoly
+deliberately, but we found that using the names of other publishing
+houses helped to give our magazines an impression of variety. Of
+course, we didn't want too much variety, either; only the tried and
+tested kind.</p>
+
+<p>Cybernetics gained its monopoly by cutting costs of production. It had
+succeeded in linking electronic calculators to photo-copying
+machines. Through this combination, all kinds of texts and
+illustrations could be produced automatically.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_f.jpg" alt="F" width="33" height="40" /></div>
+<p>ormula punch cards, fed to the calculators, produced articles and
+stories of standard styles and substance. Market analysts in the
+research division designed the formulas for the punch cards. An
+editing machine shuffled the cards before giving them to the
+calculating machines.</p>
+
+<p>The shuffling produced enough variation in the final product to
+suggest novelty to the reader without actually presenting anything
+strange or unexpected.</p>
+
+<p>Once the cards were in the machine, they set off electronic impulses
+which, by a scanning process, projected photographic images of type
+and illustrations to a ribbon of paper. This ribbon ran through a
+battery of xerographic machines to reproduce the exact number of
+copies specified by the market indicator.</p>
+
+<p>Everything worked smoothly without the necessity for thought, which,
+as you know, is expensive and often wasteful.</p>
+
+<p>In the second week of the Calamity, one machine after another seemed
+to go put of order. I couldn't tell whether the trouble was in the
+cards, in the research office, or in the machines.</p>
+
+<p>First, one produced something entitled "A Critique of the Bureaucratic
+Culture Pattern." Then another would give out nothing but lyric poems.
+A third simply printed obvious gibberish, the letters F-R-E-E-D-O-M.
+And one of our oldest machines ran off a series of limericks of a
+decidedly pungent flavor.</p>
+
+<p>I did all I could to straighten them out. Even our cleaning compounds
+were analyzed for traces of alcohol. But we weren't able to locate the
+trouble. And we didn't dare shut off the power because that would have
+backed up our continuous stream of pulp and paper all the way to
+Canada, Alaska and Scandinavia. There didn't seem to be anything to do
+but let the publications go on through to the distribution center.</p>
+
+<p>Before they were returned to the pulp mills, some of the publications
+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.)</p>
+
+
+<h2>2</h2>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="43" height="40" /></div>
+<p>y name is Minton, traffic officer emeritus on the Extrapolated
+Parkway.</p>
+
+<p>The Parkway was equipped with the usual electronic controls to propel
+cars magnetically, to maintain a safe distance between all cars, and
+to hold them automatically in their proper lanes. The controls also
+turned cars off the Parkways at the proper exit, according to the
+settings on the individual automobile's direction-finder.</p>
+
+<p>On the ninth day of the Calamity, the controls became erratic. Cars
+ran off the highway at the wrong exits, even though their
+direction-finders seemed to be in good order. Many turned around in
+circles at entrances to the Parkway and failed to enter. Drivers
+abandoned cars in despair and actually made their way on foot. Those
+who remembered how to steer by hand, mainly persons with obsolete
+cars, were able to travel by using back country roads. It was almost
+like old times, when we used to have accidents.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, I kept getting radio calls from motorists whose cars were
+trapped on the highway. They were unable to turn off anywhere, even at
+the wrong exit. The magnetic propellers forced them to continue
+traveling a circular route for hours. I don't know what they expected
+<i>me</i> to do about it.</p>
+
+<p>They tried to say I tampered with the controls, but I had no such
+orders. There was nothing in the Traffic Officer's Manual to cover
+this situation, so I naturally did nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Anyway, I think that the trouble lay with the direction-finders in the
+cars rather than with the Highway Controls. For several days
+previously, a great many cars no matter how the automatic
+direction-finders were set, had been known to head for water if they
+weren't watched. Because of the fact that so many motorists had formed
+a habit of snoozing, once the car was in motion, there were a number
+of drownings. If we could have done anything to prevent them, we
+probably would have, though that wasn't our job.</p>
+
+
+<h2>3</h2>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="43" height="40" /></div>
+<p>y name is Elder, sound director for Station 40 N 180.</p>
+
+<p>We had noticed nothing unusual about our broadcasts until the third
+day of the Calamity. That was the first time one of our
+ultra-sensitive microphones began to pick up and broadcast speeches
+from unknown sources.</p>
+
+<p>Our third assistant monitor was the first to notice. He called and
+told me that interference was disrupting the program. A few minutes
+later, he said that the sponsor's message, as broadcast, did not
+conform to the copy which had been put on the tape. (To eliminate
+studio errors, all our broadcast programs were first recorded on
+electro-magnetic tape and edited before they were released.)</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/image_001.jpg" width="400" height="559" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>We checked and found that none of the commercial messages were going
+through properly. The fact is that they were broadcast very
+improperly.</p>
+
+<p>I tested the microphone myself and was reported as saying, "What
+difference does it make?" I had used the conventional testing phrases,
+"One, two, three, four," yet all three monitors swore that the other
+sentence had been uttered in my voice.</p>
+
+<p>We switched at once to broadcasting music exclusively as an
+alternative to verbal programs, but the microphones continued to
+pickup vocal interference. The voices were of many kinds and not
+always distinct. They sounded sincere and the words were plain, but I
+could not discern any meaning in them.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_f.jpg" alt="F" width="33" height="40" /></div>
+<p>or a while, until the Calamity affected wire communications, too, we
+received telephone comments from our audience.</p>
+
+<p>A few people complained about the confusion, but most asked us to turn
+off the music and let the voices come through clearly.</p>
+
+<p>One of the listeners said to us, "I haven't heard men speak their
+minds so plainly since the morning Grandma wrecked Grandpa's new
+helicopter."</p>
+
+
+<h2>4</h2>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="43" height="40" /></div>
+<p>y name is Wilson. I manned the remote control panel for the
+Duplicator Construction Company.</p>
+
+<p>As you know, we directed a battery of building machines which erected
+mass housing projects. I directed only the destination of our
+machines. Once I sent them to a site, they completed their work
+automatically with the materials installed at our supply depot.</p>
+
+<p>A single machine could prepare a site and erect a complete house in
+one day. With an army of 5,000 machines, our firm had succeeded in
+building as many houses as there was room for, and we had started on
+the demolition of our original buildings for replacement with the
+modern economy-size model. This made room for three families where one
+had lived before. We started this replacement program the week before
+the Calamity.</p>
+
+<p>The first hint of trouble was a call from a checker to the front
+office. I happened to be there when he appeared on the vid-screen and
+said that one of our machines had built a Chinese pagoda. He seemed to
+think it was funny.</p>
+
+<p>Then we began to receive other reports. Our machines were building
+grape arbors, covered bridges, cloisters, music halls, green houses,
+dancing pavilions and hunting lodges.</p>
+
+<p>One machine was not building at all, but had gone on a rampage,
+clearing ground where we had just completed one thousand of the new
+economy-size dwelling units.</p>
+
+<p>The machine was dynamited by our emergency squad.</p>
+
+
+<h2>5</h2>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="43" height="40" /></div>
+<p>y name is Fisher. On the first day of the Calamity, I was a member of an
+audience which had been employed by the Spectacle Commission to observe the
+start of the Forty-Ton-Shovel-Cross-Continent-Ditch-Digging Contest.</p>
+
+<p>This was the first time that power shovels of this size had been used
+to dig a ditch more than a thousand miles long. I was very proud to be
+in that audience.</p>
+
+<p>The contest started on time. The shovels were marshaled and on their
+marks at the city line. The Mayor fired a disarmed war rocket as the
+signal to start.</p>
+
+<p>And then the shovels, instead of biting into the dirt, turned at right
+angles and began to chew a path through the paid audience.</p>
+
+<p>This was not called for in the contract and many hired spectators ran
+away in fright, but a few of us had enough professional pride to stand
+by. We watched as the shovels cut an irregular path through streets,
+parks and open lots in the city snapping at everything in their way
+until they reached the water-front.</p>
+
+<p>I thought they would stop at the docks. The leaders <i>did</i> pause, until
+all the shovels had come abreast. Then, as if they had a common
+impulse, they rolled into the harbor and sank in unison.</p>
+
+<p>As I later said to my wife, it was quite extraordinary.</p>
+
+
+<h2>6</h2>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="43" height="40" /></div>
+<p>y name is Danville. I was watching a colorvision program on the first
+day of the Calamity.</p>
+
+<p>The program was a wrestling match between a woman and a bear. The bear
+was winning when the screen went dark. The announcer's voice faded and
+I heard what sounded like the chatter of my neighbors. When the screen
+lit up again, it showed my own home. The door opened to reveal the
+hallway to the dining room, where I could see my wife sewing a patch
+on my son's pants. Then I saw my daughter experimenting on fudge in
+the food laboratory and my boy working on a bomb model. What surprised
+me most was a picture of myself staring at myself on the screen.</p>
+
+<p>This wasn't very interesting to me, so I tried some of the other
+stations. No matter where I tuned in, though, I found myself looking
+at a part of my own home. I wrote a letter of complaint to the
+Universal Program Commission, but never even got an answer.</p>
+
+
+<h2>7</h2>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="19" height="40" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp; am sorry that I do not remember my name. I have been employed a long
+time in the Classified Laboratory of Theoretical Physics and have been
+under security orders to speak to no one except in answer to official
+queries. As I am the only scholar in my field&mdash;the polarity of the
+positron&mdash;I have never been asked for information. If I had been,
+perhaps I would not have forgotten my name, but I cannot be sure. I
+don't know whether the replies are signed.</p>
+
+<p>I could have prevented the Calamity. I tried. I risked my life in the
+attempt. But at the moment when it seemed I might succeed, something
+happened which I must try to explain.</p>
+
+<p>First let me tell you why I knew what would happen.</p>
+
+<p>My studies of minute particles led me to believe that machines might
+exert some form of choice. Simply because aggregates have always
+behaved predictably, I could not assume they always would. Even though
+the masses of men behaved as expected, I remember that, in my
+grandfather's time, individual persons frequently departed from
+established courses. What the individual could do, I felt the mass or
+the machine might do.</p>
+
+<p>As you know, these were subversive views, running directly counter to
+the cult of the Statisticians, which was based entirely on the
+predictability of mass behavior.</p>
+
+<p>The cult of the Statisticians was strong because it produced results.
+By employing Statisticians, the contending armies in the Peripheral
+Wars predicted each other's movements so accurately that they
+eliminated the possibility of surprise. Thus the Statisticians
+produced the military impasse which destroyed the prestige of
+political leadership. From that time on, Statisticians filled the
+posts of government.</p>
+
+<p>The success of the Statisticians proved their undoing. They claimed
+that they could create a perfect system without conflict or accident.
+They fondly believed that with the feedback in the electron brain,
+they could anticipate and correct all deviations in behavior, human or
+mechanical.</p>
+
+<p>They might have succeeded, if not for a fundamental error.</p>
+
+<p>I discovered this error as soon as the plans for the fiscal century
+were published. The design of the electron brain had completely
+ignored the polarity of the positron. In the total fiscal complex,
+this factor permits any aggregate to choose its own course. But the
+error was not immediately obvious to the Statisticians. It remained
+subtle and concealed until multiplied beyond control.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_n.jpg" alt="N" width="37" height="40" /></div>
+<p>aturally, I prepared a report to predict to my chiefs the dangers
+embedded in this plan for a perfect world. I predicted that the
+machines would make their own decisions, even though most men long ago
+had lost that power. I even warned them that the ancient concept of
+"free will," now forbidden, would return to destroy them. These were
+the facts I offered.</p>
+
+<p>The report was never delivered.</p>
+
+<p>I'd hardly put my seal on the document when the automatic security
+guard closed in. The document was seized and I was bound gagged and
+thrown onto a conveyor belt. I saw myself on the way to the eraser.
+Only the polarity of the positron saved me. Desperately, on my way out
+of the laboratory, I kicked a single switch.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of taking me to my punishment, the conveyor belt converted
+itself into a joy ride. The gag fell out. My bonds dissolved. The
+Calamity had begun.</p>
+
+<p>The joy ride carried me to witness many of the events reported to this
+Commission. And then it tossed me directly into the center of the
+office of the Chiefs. I had one more opportunity to tell my story, to
+save the system.</p>
+
+<p>Given a second choice, I reconsidered.</p>
+
+<p>Had a perfect system been to my taste, I'd have died cheerfully to
+save it. But the Calamity excited me. I relished its surprises and
+adventures, even its hazards. I remember the old peasant proverb,
+"When life is perfect, it is time to die." And I decided I'd rather
+live.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">historian's note:</span><i> At this point, the Commission abruptly closed its
+hearings. The unnamed physicist was charged with treason and ordered
+executed on the spot. His life was saved, however, by Rioters
+representing the New Disorder, which, upon seizing power, decreed that
+the Calamity should henceforth be called the Blessing.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The physicist was rewarded by being made head of the government. He
+served two distinguished terms as President Nameless, which was the
+origin of the Presidential title of address, "Your Namelessness."</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The Commission, of course, was sent to Erasure.</i></p>
+
+<p class="p1"><b>&mdash;MARK MEADOWS</b></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Joy Ride, by Mark Meadows
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOY RIDE ***
+
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+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Joy Ride, by Mark Meadows
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Joy Ride
+
+Author: Mark Meadows
+
+Illustrator: Dick Francis
+
+Release Date: April 12, 2010 [EBook #31961]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOY RIDE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ Transcriber's Note:
+
+ This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction December 1954.
+ Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+ copyright on this publication was renewed.
+
+
+ joy ride
+
+
+ By MARK MEADOWS
+
+
+ Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS
+
+
+ Men or machines--something had to give--though not
+ necessarily one or the other. Why not both?
+
+ * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+(HISTORIAN'S NOTE: _The following statements are extracted from
+depositions taken by the Commission of Formal Inquiry appointed by the
+Peloric Rehabilitation Council, a body formed as a provisional
+government in the third month of the Calamity_.)
+
+
+1
+
+My name is Andrews, third assistant vice president in charge of
+maintenance for Cybernetic Publishers.
+
+It is not generally known that all the periodical publications for the
+world were put out by Cybernetics. We did not conceal the monopoly
+deliberately, but we found that using the names of other publishing
+houses helped to give our magazines an impression of variety. Of
+course, we didn't want too much variety, either; only the tried and
+tested kind.
+
+Cybernetics gained its monopoly by cutting costs of production. It had
+succeeded in linking electronic calculators to photo-copying
+machines. Through this combination, all kinds of texts and
+illustrations could be produced automatically.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Formula punch cards, fed to the calculators, produced articles and
+stories of standard styles and substance. Market analysts in the
+research division designed the formulas for the punch cards. An
+editing machine shuffled the cards before giving them to the
+calculating machines.
+
+The shuffling produced enough variation in the final product to
+suggest novelty to the reader without actually presenting anything
+strange or unexpected.
+
+Once the cards were in the machine, they set off electronic impulses
+which, by a scanning process, projected photographic images of type
+and illustrations to a ribbon of paper. This ribbon ran through a
+battery of xerographic machines to reproduce the exact 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 another seemed
+to go put of order. I couldn't tell whether the trouble was in the
+cards, in the research office, or in the machines.
+
+First, one produced something entitled "A Critique of the Bureaucratic
+Culture Pattern." Then another would give out nothing but lyric poems.
+A third simply printed obvious gibberish, the letters F-R-E-E-D-O-M.
+And one of our oldest machines ran off a series of limericks of a
+decidedly pungent flavor.
+
+I did all I could to straighten them out. Even our cleaning compounds
+were analyzed for traces of alcohol. But we weren't able to locate the
+trouble. And we didn't dare shut off the power because that would have
+backed up our continuous stream of pulp and paper all the way to
+Canada, Alaska and Scandinavia. There didn't seem to be anything to do
+but let the publications go on through to the distribution center.
+
+Before they were returned to the pulp mills, some of the publications
+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.)
+
+
+2
+
+My name is Minton, traffic officer emeritus on the Extrapolated
+Parkway.
+
+The Parkway was equipped with the usual electronic controls to propel
+cars magnetically, to maintain a safe distance between all cars, and
+to hold them automatically in their proper lanes. The controls also
+turned cars off the Parkways at the proper exit, according to the
+settings on the individual automobile's direction-finder.
+
+On the ninth day of the Calamity, the controls became erratic. Cars
+ran off the highway at the wrong exits, even though their
+direction-finders seemed to be in good order. Many turned around in
+circles at entrances to the Parkway and failed to enter. Drivers
+abandoned cars in despair and actually made their way on foot. Those
+who remembered how to steer by hand, mainly persons with obsolete
+cars, were able to travel by using back country roads. It was almost
+like old times, when we used to have accidents.
+
+Meanwhile, I kept getting radio calls from motorists whose cars were
+trapped on the highway. They were unable to turn off anywhere, even at
+the wrong exit. The magnetic propellers forced them to continue
+traveling a circular route for hours. I don't know what they expected
+_me_ to do about it.
+
+They tried to say I tampered with the controls, but I had no such
+orders. There was nothing in the Traffic Officer's Manual to cover
+this situation, so I naturally did nothing.
+
+Anyway, I think that the trouble lay with the direction-finders in the
+cars rather than with the Highway Controls. For several days
+previously, a great many cars no matter how the automatic
+direction-finders were set, had been known to head for water if they
+weren't watched. Because of the fact that so many motorists had formed
+a habit of snoozing, once the car was in motion, there were a number
+of drownings. If we could have done anything to prevent them, we
+probably would have, though that wasn't our job.
+
+
+3
+
+MY name is Elder, sound director for Station 40 N 180.
+
+We had noticed nothing unusual about our broadcasts until the third
+day of the Calamity. That was the first time one of our
+ultra-sensitive microphones began to pick up and broadcast speeches
+from unknown sources.
+
+Our third assistant monitor was the first to notice. He called and
+told me that interference was disrupting the program. A few minutes
+later, he said that the sponsor's message, as broadcast, did not
+conform to the copy which had been put on the tape. (To eliminate
+studio errors, all our broadcast programs were first recorded on
+electro-magnetic tape and edited before they were released.)
+
+[Illustration]
+
+We checked and found that none of the commercial messages were going
+through properly. The fact is that they were broadcast very
+improperly.
+
+I tested the microphone myself and was reported as saying, "What
+difference does it make?" I had used the conventional testing phrases,
+"One, two, three, four," yet all three monitors swore that the other
+sentence had been uttered in my voice.
+
+We switched at once to broadcasting music exclusively as an
+alternative to verbal programs, but the microphones continued to
+pickup vocal interference. The voices were of many kinds and not
+always distinct. They sounded sincere and the words were plain, but I
+could not discern any meaning in them.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+For a while, until the Calamity affected wire communications, too, we
+received telephone comments from our audience.
+
+A few people complained about the confusion, but most asked us to turn
+off the music and let the voices come through clearly.
+
+One of the listeners said to us, "I haven't heard men speak their
+minds so plainly since the morning Grandma wrecked Grandpa's new
+helicopter."
+
+
+4
+
+My name is Wilson. I manned the remote control panel for the
+Duplicator Construction Company.
+
+As you know, we directed a battery of building machines which erected
+mass housing projects. I directed only the destination of our
+machines. Once I sent them to a site, they completed their work
+automatically with the materials installed at our supply depot.
+
+A single machine could prepare a site and erect a complete house in
+one day. With an army of 5,000 machines, our firm had succeeded in
+building as many houses as there was room for, and we had started on
+the demolition of our original buildings for replacement with the
+modern economy-size model. This made room for three families where one
+had lived before. We started this replacement program the week before
+the Calamity.
+
+The first hint of trouble was a call from a checker to the front
+office. I happened to be there when he appeared on the vid-screen and
+said that one of our machines had built a Chinese pagoda. He seemed to
+think it was funny.
+
+Then we began to receive other reports. Our machines were building
+grape arbors, covered bridges, cloisters, music halls, green houses,
+dancing pavilions and hunting lodges.
+
+One machine was not building at all, but had gone on a rampage,
+clearing ground where we had just completed one thousand of the new
+economy-size dwelling units.
+
+The machine was dynamited by our emergency squad.
+
+
+5
+
+My name is Fisher. On the first day of the Calamity, I was a member of an
+audience which had been employed by the Spectacle Commission to observe the
+start of the Forty-Ton-Shovel-Cross-Continent-Ditch-Digging Contest.
+
+This was the first time that power shovels of this size had been used
+to dig a ditch more than a thousand miles long. I was very proud to be
+in that audience.
+
+The contest started on time. The shovels were marshaled and on their
+marks at the city line. The Mayor fired a disarmed war rocket as the
+signal to start.
+
+And then the shovels, instead of biting into the dirt, turned at right
+angles and began to chew a path through the paid audience.
+
+This was not called for in the contract and many hired spectators ran
+away in fright, but a few of us had enough professional pride to stand
+by. We watched as the shovels cut an irregular path through streets,
+parks and open lots in the city snapping at everything in their way
+until they reached the water-front.
+
+I thought they would stop at the docks. The leaders _did_ pause, until
+all the shovels had come abreast. Then, as if they had a common
+impulse, they rolled into the harbor and sank in unison.
+
+As I later said to my wife, it was quite extraordinary.
+
+
+6
+
+My name is Danville. I was watching a colorvision program on the first
+day of the Calamity.
+
+The program was a wrestling match between a woman and a bear. The bear
+was winning when the screen went dark. The announcer's voice faded and
+I heard what sounded like the chatter of my neighbors. When the screen
+lit up again, it showed my own home. The door opened to reveal the
+hallway to the dining room, where I could see my wife sewing a patch
+on my son's pants. Then I saw my daughter experimenting on fudge in
+the food laboratory and my boy working on a bomb model. What surprised
+me most was a picture of myself staring at myself on the screen.
+
+This wasn't very interesting to me, so I tried some of the other
+stations. No matter where I tuned in, though, I found myself looking
+at a part of my own home. I wrote a letter of complaint to the
+Universal Program Commission, but never even got an answer.
+
+
+7
+
+I am sorry that I do not remember my name. I have been employed a long
+time in the Classified Laboratory of Theoretical Physics and have been
+under security orders to speak to no one except in answer to official
+queries. As I am the only scholar in my field--the polarity of the
+positron--I have never been asked for information. If I had been,
+perhaps I would not have forgotten my name, but I cannot be sure. I
+don't know whether the replies are signed.
+
+I could have prevented the Calamity. I tried. I risked my life in the
+attempt. But at the moment when it seemed I might succeed, something
+happened which I must try to explain.
+
+First let me tell you why I knew what would happen.
+
+My studies of minute particles led me to believe that machines might
+exert some form of choice. Simply because aggregates have always
+behaved predictably, I could not assume they always would. Even though
+the masses of men behaved as expected, I remember that, in my
+grandfather's time, individual persons frequently departed from
+established courses. What the individual could do, I felt the mass or
+the machine might do.
+
+As you know, these were subversive views, running directly counter to
+the cult of the Statisticians, which was based entirely on the
+predictability of mass behavior.
+
+The cult of the Statisticians was strong because it produced results.
+By employing Statisticians, the contending armies in the Peripheral
+Wars predicted each other's movements so accurately that they
+eliminated the possibility of surprise. Thus the Statisticians
+produced the military impasse which destroyed the prestige of
+political leadership. From that time on, Statisticians filled the
+posts of government.
+
+The success of the Statisticians proved their undoing. They claimed
+that they could create a perfect system without conflict or accident.
+They fondly believed that with the feedback in the electron brain,
+they could anticipate and correct all deviations in behavior, human or
+mechanical.
+
+They might have succeeded, if not for a fundamental error.
+
+I discovered this error as soon as the plans for the fiscal century
+were published. The design of the electron brain had completely
+ignored the polarity of the positron. In the total fiscal complex,
+this factor permits any aggregate to choose its own course. But the
+error was not immediately obvious to the Statisticians. It remained
+subtle and concealed until multiplied beyond control.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Naturally, I prepared a report to predict to my chiefs the dangers
+embedded in this plan for a perfect world. I predicted that the
+machines would make their own decisions, even though most men long ago
+had lost that power. I even warned them that the ancient concept of
+"free will," now forbidden, would return to destroy them. These were
+the facts I offered.
+
+The report was never delivered.
+
+I'd hardly put my seal on the document when the automatic security
+guard closed in. The document was seized and I was bound gagged and
+thrown onto a conveyor belt. I saw myself on the way to the eraser.
+Only the polarity of the positron saved me. Desperately, on my way out
+of the laboratory, I kicked a single switch.
+
+Instead of taking me to my punishment, the conveyor belt converted
+itself into a joy ride. The gag fell out. My bonds dissolved. The
+Calamity had begun.
+
+The joy ride carried me to witness many of the events reported to this
+Commission. And then it tossed me directly into the center of the
+office of the Chiefs. I had one more opportunity to tell my story, to
+save the system.
+
+Given a second choice, I reconsidered.
+
+Had a perfect system been to my taste, I'd have died cheerfully to
+save it. But the Calamity excited me. I relished its surprises and
+adventures, even its hazards. I remember the old peasant proverb,
+"When life is perfect, it is time to die." And I decided I'd rather
+live.
+
+HISTORIAN'S NOTE:_ At this point, the Commission abruptly closed its
+hearings. The unnamed physicist was charged with treason and ordered
+executed on the spot. His life was saved, however, by Rioters
+representing the New Disorder, which, upon seizing power, decreed that
+the Calamity should henceforth be called the Blessing._
+
+_The physicist was rewarded by being made head of the government. He
+served two distinguished terms as President Nameless, which was the
+origin of the Presidential title of address, "Your Namelessness._"
+
+_The Commission, of course, was sent to Erasure._
+
+ --MARK MEADOWS
+
+ * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Joy Ride, by Mark Meadows
+
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