Page 57 - Like No Business I Know

Get in the POOL!

RALPH: Well, it might have been when I got there. It was just my
bad luck to start a few hours before Cheerful Robots abolished it. My
first day was the POOL’s last day.
SOUND EFFECT: (doorbell)
SERVOTECH: Your brother is here, Mrs. McGeddin.

FRANCINE: Well, maybe he can shed some light on—
FRED (furiously): Sis! I can’t believe it! All the years I gave to the
company! They threw me out on the street: me! Why, I was in the
HRD from the beginning. I built the POOL and filled it for them.
No severance pay! Nothing! What am I going to do?

RALPH: Have a drink, Freddy boy, and join the ranks of the
unemployed.
SERVOTECH: I am not acquainted with your preference in
beverages, sir. What would you like?
FRED: I don’t want a drink, you clanking bloody monstrosity! I’d
like to pull the plug on you right now!
SERVOTECH: I’m sorry, sir, but I am still under warranty. I cannot
permit you to damage me. Please refer all complaints to Customer
Service at Cheerful Robots Unlimited.
FRANCINE: Calm down, Frederick! Why did you lose your job? Is it
because of Ralph? Did they find out that he is your brother-in-law?
FRED (groans): No, no, nothing like that. I should have seen it
coming. They have managed to model everything else. I foolishly
thought human beings had some mysterious quality that would be
irreducible, that the ultimate source of our fears and desires was
buried deep in an unpredictable irrational realm of the unconscious,
inaccessible to neurological probes and logical analysis. Maybe that’s
what they used to call “free will.” I don’t know. But the Servotechs
ran enough tests with the POOL to build up a huge file of
information correlating cause and effect, stimulus and response. I
didn’t know it but for the past year or so they must have been
running a parallel electronic POOL to determine if they needed
human beings at all to do their product testing. Today they decided
they didn’t.
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