Mack Reynolds - Earth Unaware

Tubber shrugged pleasantly, after darting a disapproving glance over at the juke box which was now rendering a Rock’n’Swing version of Silent Night. He all but yelled to get his voice above the alleged music. “Anything can be a disaster if overdone. You can drink enough water to kill yourself. What in the name of the All-Mother is that piece they’re playing? It seems, very vaguely, to be familiar.”

Ed told him.

Tubber looked disbelief. “That’s Stille Nacht ? Dear one, you are jesting.”

Ed figured they’d gone through enough preliminary pleasantries. He said, “Look here, Mr. Tubber…”

Tubber bent an eye on him.

“…Uh, that is, Ezekiel. I’ve been assigned to contact you and try to come to some understanding on these developments of the past couple of weeks. I don’t suppose there’s any need of telling you that the world is going to pot by the minute. There are riots going on in half of the larger cities of the world. People are going batty for lack of something to do. No TV, no radio, no movies. Not even comics or fiction, to read.”

“Surely you are mistaken. Why, the world’s classics haven’t been effected through my righteous actions.”

“The world’s classics! Who the devil reads classics? The people want something they can read without thinking! After a hard day, people can’t concentrate.”

“A hard day?” Tubber said mildly.

“Well, you know what I mean.”

The bearded religious leader said gently, “That is the difficulty, dear one. The All-Mother designed man to put in a hard day, as you call it. A full day. A productive day. Not necessarily a physically hard day, of course. Mental endeavor is just as important as physical.”

“ Just as important,” Ed said. “More important. Anybody knows that.”

“No,” Tubber said mildly. “The hand is as important as the brain.”

“Yeah? Without the brain where would man be?”

“And where without the hand?”

“Some of the monkeys have hands and haven’t got very far.”

“Such animals as dolphins and whales have brains and haven’t gotten very far either. Both are needed, dear one. The one as badly as the other.”

Ed said, “We’re getting away from the point. The point is that the world’s on the point of collapse because of this, these… well, whatever it is you do.”

Tubber nodded and dialed himself another beer. He scowled at the juke box which was now roaring out a hill billy lament, complete with vocal twang. The hill billy twang, it came to Ed Wonder, intensified as each decade went by. He wondered if a hundred years ago there had actually been a twang in Ozark speech.

“Fine,” Tubber said.

“What?” Ed asked. The juke box had distracted him.

“You said the world is on the point of collapse.” The Speaker of the Word nodded satisfaction. “After the collapse, perhaps all will take up the path to Elysium.”

Ed finished his Manhattan and dialed another. “Now look,” he said aggressively, “I’ve been checking on some of your background. You’re a well-educated man. You’ve been around. In short, you’re not stupid.”

“Thank you, Edward,” Tubber said. He scowled again over at the juke box. They had to shout to make themselves heard.

“All right. Now suppose everything you say about the Welfare State is correct. Let’s concede that. All right. I’ve just been over to Elysium. I’ve seen how you live there. Okay. It’s fine for some people. Some people must love it. Nice and quiet. Good place to write poetry, or do handicrafts or scientific experiments, maybe. But, holy smokes, do you expect everybody to want to live like that? You’ve got this tiny community of a few dozen households. The whole world can’t join up. It’s a small basis thing. You keep talking about taking the road to Elysium. Suppose everybody did, how would you pack four or five billion people into that little Elysium of yours?”

Ezekiel Joshua Tubber had heard him out. Now he chuckled. Broke off his humor to scowl still once again at the source of music. The juke box never went silent. There was always someone to drop in another coin.

“You fail to understand the word, dear one. Our term Elysium has a double meaning. Obviously, we do not expect the whole world to join our little community. It is but an example for others to heed. We are but indicating that it is possible to lead full, meaningful lives without resort to the endless products of present mechanical society. Perhaps we go to the extreme, for the sake of emphasis. I utilize horse and wagon to illustrate that five hundred horsepower hovercars, gulping up petroleum products at a disastrous rate for the sake of obtaining a speed of two hundred miles an hour, are redundant. There are many examples to illustrate that too often we utilize complicated machinery simply for machinery’s sake.”

Ed shouted, “I don’t get that.”

Tubber said, “Take the abacus. For years we have been sneering at the Japanese, Chinese and Russians because they are so backward as to use the abacus in their businesses, their banks and so forth, instead of our electrical adding machines. However, the fact is that the abacus is more efficient and actually faster than the usual electric adding machine, and most certainly less apt to break down.” The old boy glowered in the direction of the juke box. “Verily, that device is an abomination.”

Ed said, in exasperation, “But we can’t scrap all the mechanical devices we’ve invented over the past couple of hundred years.”

“Nor would I wish to, loved one. It is quite true that you can’t un-invent an invention any more than you can unscramble scrambled eggs. However, the world has gone far beyond the point of intelligent usage of these discoveries.”

The old man thought a moment. “Let me give you a hypothetical case. Suppose a high pressure entrepreneur conceives of something that to this point no one had dreamed of wanting. Let us take some thing out of the dear sky. Let us say an electric martini stirrer.”

“It’s been done,” Ed said.

Tubber stared at him. “Surely you jest.”

“No, I read about it. Back in the early 1960s. About the same time they came out with electric toothbrushes.”

“It’s still as good an example as any,” Tubber sighed. “Very well, our idea man hires some highly trained engineers, some of our best technicians, to design the electric martini stirrer. They succeed. He then turns to industry and orders a large number of the devices. Industry tools up, using a great many competent, highly trained men, and a good deal of valuable materials. Finally, the martini stirrers are finished. Our entrepreneur must now market them. He turns to Madison Avenue and invests in advertising and public relations. To this point, nobody in the United Welfare States of America had the vaguest desire for such a device, but they are soon educated. Advertising through every medium; campaigns conceived of by some of the most clever brains our country can produce. Side by side go the public relations men. It is mentioned in some columnist’s blather that Mary Malone, the TV star, is so pleased with her martini stirrer that she has begun having cocktails before lunch as well as before dinner. It is understood the Queen’s bartender invariably uses one. It is dropped that Think Watson the Fourth of I.B.M.-Remington wouldn’t dream of drinking a martini mixed otherwise.”

“I get your drift,” Ed said. “So everybody buys one. But what harm’s done? It keeps the country going.”

“That it keeps the modern economy going is quite true. But at what a cost! Our best brains are utilized contriving such nonsense and then selling it. On top of that, we are using up our resources to the point that already we are a have-not nation. We must import our raw materials. Our mountains of iron, our seas of oil, our once seemingly endless natural resources have been flushed down the sewers of this throwaway economy. On top of it all, what do you suppose this sort of thing is doing, ultimately, to the intellects of our people? How can a people maintain their collective dignity, integrity and sense of fitness if they can be so easily coerced into desires for nonsense things, status symbols, nothing things, largely because the next door neighbor has one, or some third rate cinema performer does?”