The Year's Best Science Fiction 10

A SINISTER METAMORPHOSIS Russell Baker

The number of people who want to be machines increases daily. This is a development the sociologists failed to foresee a few years ago when they were worrying about the influence of machines on society.

At that time, they thought the machines would gradually become more like people. Nobody expected people to become more like machines but, surprisingly enough, that is what more and more people want to do. We are faced with an entirely new and unexpected human drive—machine envy.

A typical case is described by an Arizona gentleman who writes that he was recently notified by a machine of the Internal Revenue Service that he had not paid his taxes. In fact, he had paid his taxes and had a canceled check to prove it.

Feeling a bit smug about catching a machine off base, he mailed back a photostat of the check and suggested that the machine take a flying leap at the moon. A few weeks later the machine wrote again, complaining that he had not paid his taxes and notifying him, in that sullen way machines have, that he not only owed a substantial fine but was also facing a long term in Leavenworth Prison.

Another photostat was mailed to the machine, but its reply was more menacing than before. At this point the Arizona man perceived that he was in the idiotic position of arguing with a machine which was programmed not to listen to him.

“My first thought was one of incoherent rage against that stupid construction of tubes and transistors,” he writes. “But as my anger subsided, I was struck by the happy thought that, if I were a machine, I would be able to respond with an equally placid stupidity that might eventually drive him to blow a vacuum tube.”

The Arizona man was suffering one form of machine envy. Another form is described by a bank teller, whom we shall call Bob. The machines which make Bob’s bank a model of customer service and banking efficiency insist that all check deposits be accompanied by a coded deposit slip which the machines mail to the bank’s customers.

Not long ago, Bob reports, a man came to his window to deposit a check. He did not have his coded deposit slip. Bob explained that the machines could not process the check without the coded deposit slip.

In the interest of greater customer service and efficiency, Bob suggested, the man should go home, find his coded deposit slip and return with it. The man’s response was, in Bob’s words, “absolutely the vilest stream of abuse I have ever heard.”

Bob is firmly convinced that if he, Bob, had been a recorded announcing machine, he would have suffered no distress. If he had been able to say, in a metallic voice, “I am sor-ry, sir, but the ob-jec-tives of great-er customer ser-vice and banking ef-ficiency pre-clude my accepting your check with-out a prop-er de-pos-it slip,” he would not have felt any embarrassment about the customer’s tirade.

Visibly increasing numbers of civil servants have already mechanized themselves so successfully that their enraged victims rarely show any desire to knock them to the floor.

“The trick in mechanizing is not to smile,” explains Harry, who is a cog in a Federal licensing office here. “The reason people never punch machines is because machines know better than to smile when they give a human the business.” Harry’s office works like this:

The license applicant comes to window one and asks for a license. There he is told he must first fill out Form A at window two. At window two he is told that he cannot fill out Form A until he has executed Form B at window three. Harry works window three. His job is to tell the applicant that he cannot fill out Form B until he has executed Form A. Usually the applicant explodes at this point and says:

“If I cannot get Form A without executing Form B, and if I cannot get Form B without executing Form A, how am I supposed to get my license?” At this point Harry refuses to smile. “I am sorry, sir,” he says, “but those are the regulations,” and he displays his shirt collar, on which is written the warning, “Do not spindle or fold.”

If the applicant persists, Harry refers him to Mrs. Barger, his superior. Mrs. Barger refers him to Mr. Clott, her superior, who refers him to Mr. Whipsnade, the department chief, who happens to be away on a 52-week vacation.

Everybody in Harry’s office has machine envy. It is a classic example of what the machines are talking about when they sit around brooding that they are in danger of being replaced by people.