Mack Reynolds - After Utopia

“Oh.” The other cleared his throat. “I used that term merely to clarify our position in your mind. There is no government any more.”

Tracy’s impatient look had turned into a stare. “No government! You’ve got to have some sort of government! In our day, the organization looked forward to a time when there would be a minimum of government. There were some eleven million people working in the bureaucracy then, in the United States alone. It was probably worse in Russia. But you’ve got to have some government.”

Betty helped herself from the serving dishes. “Why?” she said reasonably.

He was floored by her answer. “Why… why to operate things. Otherwise, you’d have chaos.”

The academician made a wry face. “We have an International Congress of Guilds which coordinates production, transportation, communications, distribution, medicine and so forth and so on, but it’s a planning body, rather than a government, not to speak of a state. The name is a bit anachronistic, in view of the fact that we don’t have nations any more.”

In irritation, Tracy shoveled up some food for himself. He had not eaten anything but superlative food since his awakening in this new world.

“Look,” he said. “Suppose I killed somebody. Deliberately. Cold-blooded murder, not an accident. What would happen to me? No cops, no courts, no jails?”

Stein said, “Why, in case of such an antisocial act, the Medical Guild would take over and cure you.”

Tracy was sarcastic. “Oh, great. So all crime is considered a medical matter, huh? That doesn’t do the man who was killed any good.”

Betty sighed and said, “Back in your day suppose you had an automobile accident. No one at fault, but several persons killed. Would you have done the dead victims any good for the authorities to jail or execute those who survived?”

“Well, sometimes they did jail them,” Cogswell said.

“I don’t see what is accomplished by punishing either a person who had an accident or a sick person.”

“I’ll think about it some more and come back at you,” Tracy said. He took another bite. “Meanwhile, this is wonderful beef.” He looked at Betty respectfully. “Did you cook it?”

“Me?” she said. “Good heavens no. These dishes come from the automated community kitchens.”

“Automated!” He looked down at his plate. “You mean that you’ve automated even cooking? Admittedly, this food is superlative but cooking isn’t one of the things you automate. It’s… well, the conception is… terrible. I’ve eaten in what we used to call automats in my day. It’s an attack on human dignity.”

Betty was surprised. “Why? An autochef produces a dish perfectly every time it is ordered. It is impossible to burn it, oversalt or undersalt it, or make any other mistakes. Once the recipe is fed into the data banks it is there for all time. Every recipe of the cuisines of the world is included.”

He shook his head in frustration. “Who is it that dreams up new recipes?”

“Anyone who wants to. Usually amateur chefs. It’s crossfiled by type of dish, ingredients, region, if any, and—”

He interrupted sarcastically. “Suppose I whomped up a recipe that involved a mixture of dill pickles, vanilla ice cream, chili peppers, mustard and chicken. Would they put that in the recipe banks?”

“Of course. Though it seems unlikely that anyone would ever order it… even you.”

“I give up,” he said. “At any rate, this is excellent beef. I don’t recall much beef in this vicinity of Morocco in my day, and what there was was pretty grim. This tastes as though it must have come from Scotland, or at least the American Middle West.”

Stein chortled apologetically. “Ah, I’m sorry about continually contradicting you, Tracy, but, you see, this beef was never grazed. In fact, it’s stretching a point to call it beef. We no longer raise beef cattle. At least not in the old sense. It was very wasteful. The cow who originally supplied the bits of steak you are eating from the casserole probably lived some thirty or forty years ago.”

Before Tracy could protest that nonsense, the academician hurried on. “In the same way that a Rembrandt can be duplicated, so can flesh, given the necessary ingredients on hand at the meat plants. It has a good many advantages, of course. Large areas of pasture land are unnecessary. And we don’t reproduce portions of the animals such as hoofs, bones, or intestines; only those parts we desire. It also makes it impossible for the meat to be diseased, tough, or in other respects undesirable.”

“I give up again,” Tracy said. “And all this is automated, of course?”

“Of course.”

Tracy took a few more bites before saying,“ ‘Listen, let’s go back a ways. This, uh, underground of yours. Does it have much trouble agitating?”

Betty said, “Agitating?”

“Gettings its message across. Distributing its propaganda. Making speeches, infiltrating—”

“Oh,” the academician said. “I see what you mean. No, certainly not. Not at all.”

That set Tracy back a bit. He said, “You mean you can just go out and advocate overthrowing the present socioeconomic system and nobody says anything? No cops, nobody to shut you up?”

“We just told you that we no longer had government in the old sense of the word.”

“But surely somebody is against you.”

“Oh, yes,” the other nodded. “And those who are against what we stand for write and speak against us.”

Tracy Cogswell put his fork down and said patiently, “Who makes up your membership, who are your potential recruits, and who’s against you?”

“Our potential recruits consist largely of those who still work, those who have the dream of continuing human advancement, those who wish to get the human race back on the track of advancement. Also organization material should be found among those who work on their own.”

Tracy didn’t realize that Stein hadn’t answered part of his question. He scowled and said, “How do you mean, those who work on their own?”

Stein said, “Some, who are not selected by the computers, decide to work on their own as amateurs, I suppose you might call them. Especially scientists, artists, scholars—”

“Wait a minute. What do you mean, those not selected by the computers?”

“Why,” the academician told him, “as I said earlier, there are very few positions to be occupied. Only the merest fraction of the population is needed to produce all we can consume. Many more apply for such positions as are available than are needed. Consequently, when there is an opening, the computers decide who is the person best suited for the job.”

Tracy Cogswell, as usual these past few days, was at sea. He said, “Well, what’s this amateur stuff?”

The other explained, saying, “Suppose, as in my own case, I was particularly interested in medicine… in my case, in some of the more esoteric fields of medicine. The computers did not select me for any of the few positions available in the field, so I continue my researches on my own.”

Tracy said, “And you have available all the materials, all the equipment, you need?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“Even though, actually, you are fighting against the, whatever-you-called-it, the International Congress of Guilds?”

Walter Stein frowned. “I’m not exactly fighting against the Congress, but even if I were, certainly I’d have available any materials I wished. No one would be in a position to forbid them to me.”

Tracy had given up eating any more. “What do you mean any materials? You mean you can get just anything you want? Suppose you wanted a king-size supply of opium. Do you mean that this distribution center of yours would just deliver it to you, no questions asked?”