Doodad (ss) by Ray Bradbury

Author:Ray Bradbury [Bradbury, Ray]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Astounding Science Fiction
Published: 1943-09-04T00:00:00+00:00

“Ah. Mr. Crowell.” The* little proprietor opened the gleaming glass door. There was still a small crowd outside. “I see you brought the doohingey. Good.”

Crowell set the contraption on the counter, thinking quickly to himself. Well. Now maybe explanations would be made. He’d have to be subtle; no blunt questions. He’d—

“Look, Mr. Whosis, I didn’t tell you. but I’m an audio reporter. I’d like to broadcast a story about you and your •hop for the Audio-News. But I’d like it in your own words.”

‘‘You know as much about the thingumabobs as I do/’ replied the little man.

‘Do I?”

“That’s the impression you gave me—”

“Oil, sure. Sure I do. But it’s always better when we quote somebody. See?”

“Your logic is nebulous, but I shall cooperate. Your listeners will probably want to know all about my Doodad Shop, eh? Well, it took thousands of years of traveling to make it grow.”

“Miles,” corrected Crowell.

“Years,” stated the little man.

“Naturally,” said Crowell.

“You might call my shop the energy result of misconstrued improper semantics. These instruments might well be labeled ‘Inventions That Do Everything Instead Of Something/”

“Oh, of course,” said Crowell, blankly.

“Now, when a man shows another man a particular part of a beetle car’s automotive controls and he can’t recall the proper label for that part, what does he do?”

Crowell saw the light. “He calls it a doodad or a hingey or a whatchamacallit. Right?”

“Correct. And if a woman, talking to another woman about her washing machine or egg beater or knitting or crochetting and she had a psychological blocking, forgets the proper semantic label, what does she say?”

“She says ‘Take this hungamabob and trinket the turndel with it. You grasp the dipsy and throw’ it over the flimsy.” said Crowell, like a school kid suddenly understanding mathematics.

“Correct!” cried the little man. “All right, then. Therefore we have the birth of incorrect semantic labels that can be used to describe anything from a hen’s nest to a motor-beetle crankcase. A doohingey can be the name of a scrub mop or a toupee. It’s a term used freely by everybody in a certain culture. A doohingey isn’t just one thing. It’s a thousand things.

“Well, now, what I have done is form into energy the combined total of all things a doohingey has ever referred to. I have entered the minds of innumerable civilized humans, extracted their opinion of what they call a doohingey, what they call a thingum, and created from raw atomic energy a physical contraption of those mentally incorrect labelings. In other words, my inventions are three-dimensional representations of a semantic idea. Since the minds of people make a doohingey anything from a carpet sweeper to a number-nine-size nut-and-bolt, my inventions follow the same pattern. The doohingey you carried home today could do almost anything you would want it to do. Many of the inventions have robotlike functions, due to the fact that the abilities of movement, thought and mechanical versatility were included in them.”

“They can do everything?”

“Well, not everything. Most of the inventions have about sixty different processes, all alien, all mixed, all shapes, sizes, molded into them.

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