What We Learned from This Morning’s Newspaper

2.

After dinner Jerry Wesley called and said we’re having a meeting at our place tonight Bill can you and your lady come?

I asked him what the meeting was about and he said it’s about the newspaper.

Oh yes I said. The newspaper. What about the newspaper?

Come to the meeting he said I really don’t want to talk about this on the phone.

Of course we’ll have to arrange a sitter Jerry.

No you won’t we’ve already arranged it he told me. The three Fischer girls are going to look after all the kids on the block. So just come over around quarter to nine.

Jerry is an insurance broker very successful at that he has the best house on the Crescent, two-story Tudor style with almost an acre of land and a big paneled rumpus room in the basement. That’s where the meeting took place. We were the seventh couple to arrive and soon after us the Maxwells the Bruces and the Thomasons came in. Folding chairs were set out and Cindy Wesley had done her usual great trays of canapés and such and there was a lot of liquor, self-service at the bar. Jerry stood up in front of everybody and grinned and said I guess you’ve all been wondering why I called you together this evening. He held up his copy of the newspaper. From where I was sitting I could make out only one headline clearly it was 10 HURT AS GUNMEN SHOOT WAY INTO AND OUT OF BANK but that was enough to enable me to recognize it as the newspaper.

Jerry said did all of you get a copy of this paper today?

Everybody nodded.

You know Jerry said that this paper gives us some extraordinary opportunities to improve our situation in life. I mean if we can accept it as the real December 1 edition and not some kind of fantastic hoax then I don’t need to tell you what sort of benefits we can get from it, right?

Sure Bob Thomason said but what makes anybody think it isn’t a hoax? I mean next week’s newspaper who could believe that?

Jerry looked at Mike Nesbit. Mike teaches at Columbia Law and is more of an intellectual than most of us.

Mike said well of course the obvious conclusion is that somebody’s playing a joke on us. But have you looked at the newspaper closely? Every one of those stories has been written in a perfectly legitimate way. There aren’t any details that ring false. It isn’t like one of those papers where the headlines have been cooked up but the body of the text is an old edition. So we have to consider the probabilities. Which sounds more fantastic? That someone would take the trouble of composing an entire fictional edition of the Times setting it in type printing it and having it delivered or that through some sort of fluke of the fourth dimension we’ve been allowed a peek at next week’s newspaper? Personally I don’t find either notion easy to believe but I can accept fourth-dimensional hocus-pocus more readily than I can the idea of a hoax. For one thing unless you’ve had a team the size of the Times’ own staff working on this newspaper it would take months and months to prepare it and there’s no way that anybody could have begun work on the paper more than a few days in advance because there are things in it that nobody could have possibly known as recently as a week ago. Like the Phase Two stuff and the fighting between India and Pakistan.

But how could we get next week’s newspaper Bob Thomason still wanted to know?

I can’t answer that said Mike Nesbit. I can only reply that I am willing to accept it as genuine. A miracle if you like.

So am I said Tim McDermott and a few others said the same.

We can make a pile of money out of this thing said Dave Bruce.

Everybody began to smile in a strange strained way. Obviously everybody had looked at the stock market stuff and the racetrack stuff and had come to the same conclusions.

Jerry said there’s one important thing we ought to find out first. Has anybody here spoken about this newspaper to anybody who isn’t currently in this room?

People said nope and uh-uh and not me.

Good said Jerry. I propose we keep it that way. We don’t notify the Times and we don’t tell Walter Cronkite and we don’t even let our brother-in-law on Dogwood Lane know, right? We just put our newspapers away in a safe place and quietly do whatever we want to do about the information we’ve got. Okay? Let’s put that to a vote. All in favor of stamping this newspaper top secret raise your right hand.

Twenty-two hands went up.

Good said Jerry. That includes the kids you realize. If you let the kids know anything they’ll want to bring the paper to school for show and tell for Christ’s sake. So cool it you hear?

Sid Fischer said are we going to work together on exploiting this thing or do we each act independently?

Independently said Dave Bruce.

Right independently said Bud Maxwell.

It went all around the room that way. The only one who wanted some sort of committee system was Charlie Harris. Charlie has bad luck in the stock market and I guess he was afraid to take any risks even with a sure thing like next week’s paper. Jerry called for a vote and it came out ten to one in favor of individual enterprise. Of course if anybody wants to team up with anybody else I said there’s nothing stopping anybody.

As we started to adjourn for refreshments Jerry said remember you only have a week to make use of what you’ve been handed. By the first of December this is going to be just another newspaper and a million other people will have copies of it. So move fast while you’ve got an advantage.