All the Troubles of the World by Isaac Asimov;David Shannon

Author:Isaac Asimov;David Shannon
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: computers, Science Fiction, Juvenile Fiction, Classics, Fiction
ISBN: 9780886822330
Published: 2011-06-18T12:59:37+00:00

Harold Quimby handled the complaints department of the Baltimore substation of Multivac. He considered himself to be a member of that branch of the civil service that was most important of all. In some ways, he may have been right, and those who heard him discuss the matter would have had to be made of iron not to feel impressed.

For one thing, Quimby would say, Multivac was essentially an invader of privacy. In the past fifty years, mankind had had to acknowledge that its thoughts and impulses were no longer secret, that it owned no inner recess where anything could be hidden. And mankind had to have something in return.

Of course, it got prosperity, peace and safety, but that was abstract. Each man and woman needed something personal as his or her own reward for surrendering privacy, and each one got it. Within reach of every human being was a Multivac station with circuits into which he could freely enter his own problems and questions without control or hindrance, and from which, in a matter of minutes, he could receive answers.

At any given moment, five million individual circuits among the quadrillion or more within Multivac might be involved in this question-and-answer program. The answers might not always be certain, but they were the best available, and every questioner knew the answer to be the best available and had faith in it. That was what counted.

And now an anxious sixteen-year-old had moved slowly up the waiting line of men and women (each face in that line illuminated by a different mixture of hope with fear or anxiety or even anguish – always with hope predominating as the person stepped nearer and nearer to Multivac).

Without looking up, Quimby took the filled-out form being handed him and said, “Booth 5-B.”

Ben said, “How do I ask the question, sir?”

Quimby looked up then, with a bit of surprise. Pre-adults did not generally make use of the service. He said kindly, “Have you ever done this before, son?”

“No, sir.”

Quimby pointed to the model on his desk. “You use this. You see how it works? Just like a typewriter. Don’t you try to write or print anything by hand. Just use the machine. Now you take booth 5-B, and if you need help, just press the red button and someone will come. Down that aisle, son, on the right.”

He watched the youngster go down the aisle and out of view and smiled. No one was ever turned away from Multivac. Of course, there was always a certain percentage of trivia: people who asked personal questions about their neighbours or obscene questions about prominent personalities; college youths trying to outguess their professors or thinking it clever to stump Multivac by asking it Russell’s class-of-all-classes paradox, and so on.

Multivac could take care of all that. It needed no help.

Besides, each question and answer was filed and formed, but another item in the fact assembly for each individual. Even the most trivial question and the most impertinent, insofar as it

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