mr. replogle's dream

                          By EVELYN E. SMITH

              This was a proud day in the life of modern
               art. This exhibition would prove that the
                    machine could not conquer man.

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                   Fantastic Universe December 1956.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


    _The Cimabue Gallery was the last stronghold of
    nostalgia--expensive nostalgia. Apart for the robot
    attendants--unfortunately necessary, the times being what they
    were--there was practically nothing machine-made about the Gallery,
    dedicated as it was to being more than a mere commercial venture.
    Evelyn E. Smith returns to these pages with a gently ironic story
    of men and dreams--the day after tomorrow...._

"This," said Mr. Ditmars, "is a proud day in the life of the Cimabue
Gallery."

"It is a proud day in the life of modern art," added Mr. Replogle,
feeling that Mr. Ditmars was giving too parochial a picture of the
situation, "for it proves with more force than ever that the machine
will not conquer man."

Both partners gazed with varying degrees of complacency at the large,
brightly-colored oil paintings that covered the refined pastel walls
of the Cimabue. There was almost nothing machine-made about the
gallery--the thick, soft rugs had been hand-woven at fabulous expense
by workmen in the less industrialized areas of the Middle East,
the furnishings hand-carved by tribesmen deep in the heart of the
Australian bush. The only exception was the robot attendants, which
were, unfortunately, necessary, for no one paid attention to human
beings any more unless they were top management or very high in the
hierarchy of handcrafters.

Cimabue could afford all this luxury, and more too, for, now that big
business had become an art, art had become a big business. People saved
the excess from their government subsidies--or, if they were lucky
enough to have professional status, their salaries--to buy a painting,
a holograph manuscript ... anything to distinguish their homes from the
uniform grey mass of material comforts which the government bestowed
on everyone alike. As a result, the partners were as wealthy as anyone
outside the ruling class could hope to be. However, Mr. Replogle, at
least, was not happy. He suffered from nightmares.

"But where is Orville?" demanded the man from the
_Times-Herald-Mirror_. "We haven't come to interview you two--you
always say the same thing about every new artist you discover. In fact,
we already have your words set up in type."

Mr. Ditmars gave him a benign smile. "Orville's case is different.
Never before in history has an absolutely unknown artist received such
an immediate ovation from the public. Why, almost every picture on
exhibit is already sold--the buyers have kindly allowed us to retain
them on our walls for the duration of the show as a service to the
public."

"Cimabue is more than a mere commercial venture," Mr. Replogle
added, wishing he could slip off for a paraspirin; his head hurt most
mechanically. "It is a cultural institution."

"Yeah, Orville did get pretty good write-ups," the _World-Post and
Journal_ man conceded, "though any half-way decent artist sells
like hotcakes these days. People naturally go for anything that's
hand-made." And he fingered his hand-painted tie self-consciously. "But
it can't last."

This disturbed Mr. Replogle more than it should have. But he had
been bothered for many years by his recurring dream--a dream so
frightful that he did not dare to confide it to anyone because of its
terrifying plausibility. And anything said or done by day that seemed
to approach that midnight horror roused him to immediate defensiveness.
"Oh, yes it can last!" he protested. "It will! It must! For art is
the people's last bulwark against the machine--the one area which
cannot be mechanized, which reassures the human race that it still is
pre-eminent."

"Kindly do not touch the pictures," the roboguard droned.

"I was only feeling Orville's impasto," the lady from the _Woman's Own
News_ defended herself. "Very thick."

_I couldn't have told her to stop_, Mr. Replogle reflected bitterly.
_Coming from me it would have been rude, but from a robot it's all
right. Everyone knows a robot's only aim is to serve man. Our altruism
depends on our individual consciences; theirs is built-in and, hence,
more reliable._

"But where _is_ Orville?" the man from the _Times-Herald-Mirror_
persisted. "He was supposed to be here at three-thirty, and it's almost
four now."

"Softly, softly," said Mr. Ditmars. "The robobar doesn't open itself
until four anyway, so you know you're in no hurry.... And, remember, a
great artist mustn't be rushed--he is not a machine, you know."

"Hervey McGeachin is bringing him," Mr. Replogle explained. "One could
hardly hurry McGeachin," he added ... unnecessarily, for everyone knew
that one didn't hurry the richest man in the United States--one awaited
his pleasure. Beside being fabulously wealthy, McGeachin had the
reputation of being something of a recluse, but this did not make him
more newsworthy, for all members of top management tended to be a bit
eccentric. The rank was hereditary--it took more than one generation
for a family to begin to understand its machines--and there was a lot
of inbreeding, with the usual results.

"Orville is a protege of Mr. McGeachin's, isn't he?" asked the lady
from _Woman's Own_.

"Yes," Mr. Ditmars said. "All that was in the press release. He's one
of Mr. McGeachin's employees. Mr. McGeachin discovered him personally,
and he got in touch with _us_." Mr. Ditmars almost swelled with visible
pride; Mr. Replogle wished he would exercise a bit more self-restraint.
Such an open display of emotion was vulgar--almost mechanical, one
might say. Especially since they themselves were management, in a way,
although one didn't, of course, apply such a word to those who dealt
in the arts and crafts. The general public feared and respected the
management which governed them, but they loved entrepreneurs.

"A factory hand!" _Woman's Own_ gushed. "What a story that will make!"

The male reporters laughed as one male. "Where have you been all these
years, cookie?" asked the _World-Post and Journal_. "I doubt if there's
a factory left in the United States that isn't mechanized to the very
hilt by now--with robot labor for the more specialized operations."

"I know," she sighed. "Deep down inside of me I really know. I was
just hoping. I suppose I am--" and she batted her eyelashes "--like
all females, an incurable romantic. What _do_ you suppose Orville is,
then?"

"Might be a clerk," _Time-week_ suggested. "A lot of the big places
still use live clerical help for tone, and, of course, you always need
a few human beings around in case the machines break down."

"I somehow got the impression that he was an executive," Mr. Ditmars
said frostily.

"Let's hope not. It would ruin the human element in the story. You
can't expect our readers to identify with management."

"A minor executive, that is," Mr. Replogle hastened to inform them,
before Ditmars could open his big mouth again. "More like a shipping
clerk."

"Is Orville his first or his last name?" _Woman's Own_ wanted to know.

"Just Orville," Mr. Ditmars said. "Like Rembrandt."

"Of course Rembrandt did have a last name," Mr. Replogle pointed out.
"He just isn't known by it."

"And Orville's more like Grandma Moses, anyhow, I would say," commented
the _Times-Herald-Mirror_.

"He is a primitive, true," Mr. Replogle said judiciously. "If you
insist upon pinning a label on him, you might call him a post
pre-Raphaelite, with just a soupcon of Rousseau."

"I didn't know Rousseau painted," the _World-Post and Journal_ man
said, busily clicking on his typopad.

"Not that one," Mr. Replogle told him kindly. "The other two."

"How old is Orville?" _Woman's Own_ held her typopad at the ready. "How
many children does he have? Is he married? Fond of animals? What does
he eat for breakfast?"

"For heaven's sake," Mr. Ditmars exploded, "it isn't the man himself
that matters--it's the man as interpreted through his art! And you can
see that art for yourself." He waved his arms toward the pale gallery
walls. "Drink it in and absorb the essence of the artist."

"But we'd like a little more factual data, as a point of departure.
After all, our readers--"

"All right, all right," Mr. Ditmars said before Mr. Replogle could
stop him, "I'll give you all the facts we have--to wit, none. All
we know about Orville we put into the release. McGeachin's been
keeping him under wraps. We don't know a thing about him. He's
eccentric--McGeachin, I mean."

"Could be Orville also," the _World-Post and Journal_ suggested.

Mr. Ditmars sighed. "Could be Orville also," he conceded.

"It's more of a story if Orville is eccentric. You more or less expect
it from management."

"Well," Mr. Replogle said, unable to contain himself further--his head
was really blasting off--"artists can be pretty peculiar people too."

It was Mr. Ditmars' turn to glare at him.

"Make way for Hervey McGeachin III and Orville," the robot at the door
declaimed. "Make way...."

Every head swivelled to catch sight of the well-known but seldom-seen
financier, as he came jerkily through the crowd. All the journalists
were dressed in the maroon or beige or navy synthetics of almost
similar cut that mass production had enforced upon the entire
population, save for the very wealthy. Gay knitted mittens, colorful
plumed hats, rainbow-hued scarves--all of which were ostentatiously
hand-made--showed that the pressmen were professionals and not mere
government pensioners who could do nothing that a machine could not do
as well or better. However, although there were no sumptuary laws as
such, few of the journalists could afford more than one or two of these
costly, status-making accessories.

McGeachin was completely costumed in rugged individualist style. His
scarlet silk hose, emerald satin knee breeches, swallow-tailed plum
velvet coat, and starched white ruff made Mr. Replogle, who had been
rather proud of his own pale blue brocade waistcoat and seal-skin
mukluks almost sick with envy. _He's so hand-made he's practically
mechanical_, he said bitterly to himself.

McGeachin was followed by a Class Three, All-Purpose Manual Labor
Robot, well-burnished but of rather an early pattern. Surely, Mr.
Replogle thought, if the financier had to use a mechanical man, and
personal attendants were far more hand-made, he could at least have got
a more recent model.

"Welcome to Cimabue, Mr. McGeachin," Mr. Ditmars and Mr. Replogle said
almost simultaneously.

"But where is Orville?" the senior partner added.

McGeachin pointed with his long green cigar. "This is Orville," he said
in a crisp metallic voice.

Mr. Replogle could feel himself growing pale all the way down to his
mukluks. This was precisely the way his nightmare had always begun.
Only now it was reality ... or was it? Perhaps he was back in the dream
again. He could close his eyes and, when he opened them, he would be
lying in his own standard air-conditioned toti-comfort sleeplounge
under his own satin-covered, goose-down filled luxury quilt.

"A robot!" he could hear Mr. Ditmars wail, as the typopads began to
click thinly, his voice somehow sounding far away. "How could you--why
didn't you let us know he was a robot beforehand?"

Mr. Replogle opened his eyes and nothing had changed; it was all
real--it was the end.

"Because you would have discriminated against him," Hervey McGeachin
was saying, his grey face shiny with excessive emotion. "Everybody
discriminates against my poor robots. Trustworthy, hard-working, clean,
loyal to a fault--yet everybody discriminates against them merely
because they're machines. I knew that, if I had told you he was a
robot, you would never have hung his pictures in Cimabue, in spite of
the fact that it was I who recommended him."

Top management or no, Mr. Replogle felt he must speak; there were
principles at stake. The dismal future of humanity rested somehow in
his own shaking hands. "Sir," he said, in a hoarse voice, "you have
not dealt fairly with us. You said that this Orville was a protege of
yours."

"And so he is." McGeachin put a thick, unmuscular arm around the
robot's hard shoulders. "He is my protege and friend and I don't care
if people do call me a robot-lover."

There was a gasp from the reporters, even those representing the
liberal press.

McGeachin pointed his cigar at them. "Listen," he said.
"Autobiographical note." Typopads began to click. "Up until the age of
seventeen I hardly knew there was anybody on the planet but robots. My
father didn't have time to mess around with kids, since he believed
in running all of his multifarious industries personally. I, myself,
though I tour the factories only once a year, have succeeded, by means
of a computer and a ouija board, in increasing what little remained of
his vast fortune after taxes to an amount that is ten times as great as
his was at its peak."

"How do you spell _ouija_?" the man from the _World-Post and Journal_
interrupted.

"So," McGeachin continued, after affably spelling the word and making
a few adverse remarks on the sad state of current education, "during
my childhood, I was left entirely in the care of robots, and I was a
happy, carefree lad until I was sent to Harvard. There I discovered the
dark truth which has over-shadowed my life ever since and rendered me
a virtual recluse--that there are also large numbers of people in the
world. Give me a robot, any time. Trustworthy, hard-working, clean,
loyal to a fault, and, in Orville's case, artistic also. Tell 'em how
you started in to paint, Orville."

"Well, it was like this, gents," Orville said in a voice like a rusty
hinge. "I work for the Perfect Paint Section of the Superior Chemicals
Division of the Universal Materials Corporation, which is a subsidiary
of the McGeachin interests, and, as I'm getting along in gears, I was
put onto artists' oil colors, which are individually ground, like all
the artists nowadays want 'em to be--"

"In all McGeachin products, from paints to parliaments," the financier
interjected, "the customer comes first, insofar as his desires are
compatible with the mass-production methods necessarily imposed upon us
by automation."

"--And there was a little left over of some colors what wouldn't fit
into the tubes, and the forebot says to me, he says, 'Throw 'em into
the disposal, Orville--'"

"--All the McGeachin robots have names. It gives that personal touch I
like to have around my plants." There was something extraordinarily odd
about McGeachin, Mr. Replogle felt, though he couldn't quite put his
finger on just what it was ... something more than mere eccentricity,
something curiously sinister.

"--And I says to the forebot, 'Begging your pardon, sir, but if there
was no other use for 'em, I would like to try my hand at painting a
picture like on the pretty calendars Perfect Paint sends out every
Christmas.' And he says to me, laughing-like, 'Well, if that's what
you want to do with your restoration period, Orville, more power to
you' ... which is--" the robot snickered "--a kind of little joke we
have amongst ourselves at the factory."

One of the Cimabue robots gave a laugh which Mr. Replogle cut short
with a glance.

"But I didn't know they could do that," the _Times-Herald-Mirror_ said
plaintively. "Laugh, I mean."

"Ah," McGeachin told him, "that's because you never bothered to
understand the real robot. You don't look beyond the metal to the wires
that vibrate underneath."

"So I painted a picture on a piece of cardboard," Orville continued
patiently, "--the side of a carton it was--and the picture was much
admired in the plant, though I says it as shouldn't, and Mr. Pembroke,
the superintendent, went so far as to ask if he might have it to hang
in his office, which, of course, I was glad to have him do. And there
it come to the attention of Mr. McGeachin when he was making his annual
tour of the plant.... Mr. McGeachin is--" Orville approximated a modest
cough "--by way of being a connoissoor."

"When I saw that picture, I knew I was standing in the presence of
solid genius," McGeachin took over. "Mind you, when I heard it had been
painted by a robot, I was surprised myself, I admit it freely. But I
was not prejudiced. I had spent all my life with machines and I knew of
what fine handcraft they were capable. 'Why shouldn't a robot paint a
picture?' I asked myself. 'No reason whatsoever,' I answered. And I was
right, as is amply evidenced by this splendid and tastefully arranged
display." He beamed at Mr. Ditmars, who groaned.

"But it's impossible," the lady from _Woman's Own_ protested, looking
as if only the dignity of her profession kept her from bursting into
tears. "How could a robot paint a picture. How could it _want_ to paint
a picture?"

"I dunno," Orville, as the only one who could conceivably be expected
to answer this question, said. "It just come to me like that. You could
say I was inspired, I guess."

"But inspiration is a human prerogative! If a robot can be inspired,
what is left for people now?"

"'Tisn't for me to say, miss," Orville said modestly, "only I don't
see why we both couldn't be inspired. Peaceful coexistence, like. If
robots are designed to serve man, they could do a better job of it if
both--man and machine--work side by side harmoniously."

"_Work!_" exclaimed the male reporters unharmoniously.

Mr. Replogle closed his eyes. He had never expected to hear such a
mechanical word in the chaste purlieux of his gallery--his and Mr.
Ditmars' gallery, that was, but it didn't matter, soon it wouldn't be
anybody's gallery. Reality was following the inexorable course of the
dream and they were doomed.

"No offense intended," Orville said hastily. "I meant work like maybe
painting or knitting. I didn't mean machine work."

"And why not machine work?" McGeachin demanded. "Why shouldn't man work
with his hands instead of just crafting?"

A little man, Replogle thought, would be lynched for saying a more
than mechanical thing like that--mechanical, why it was down-right
subversive!--but McGeachin was secure because of the position that he
maintained only as a result of the sweat and toil of others. Only, of
course, robots don't sweat. The light film that had begun to cover
Orville was doubtless only excess oil. _Disgusting, nevertheless._

"Listen," McGeachin said, pointing his long, green cigar at the
reporters. "Important announcement. I have decided to replace all my
feedback equipment, except where the most delicate operations are
involved, by people."

The typopads clicked furiously.

"You ask me why?" although no one had; they were much too stunned.
"Because robots, though trustworthy, hard-working, clean, and loyal to
a fault, have one drawback--they're expensive. A worker dies or gets
sick, it's no extra money out of my pocket--I got to pay taxes for his
welfare anyway. A robot breaks down, his loss is all mine. A human
worker I got to take care of maybe six, seven hours a day, a robot
twenty-four hours--and it isn't as if they worked all that time; they
got to have rest periods too, or they wear out too fast. A human worker
isn't my responsibility--a robot I got to look out for all the time."

"But I thought you liked machines better than people," Mr. Replogle
said.

"So, is management expected to like labor? Is labor supposed to like
management? Traditional enemies. I just figured out why I've been so
unhappy most of my life--I _like_ my employees. It's unnatural. It's--"

"Wrong, Mr. McGeachin?" quavered _Woman's Own_. "What do you mean?"

"I'm going to put people in my factories and have robots at my dinner
table.... They don't eat--" McGeachin chuckled fruitily "--so you can
see what an economy move that would be."

Nobody laughed. If McGeachin hadn't been top management--really top
management--Mr. Replogle knew, he would have been torn to pieces. But
top management was boss; it was government; it was divine right. Nobody
did anything.

"If the machine can replace man," Orville suggested, "why can't man
replace the machine? Plenty of room for both.... Did I say something
wrong?" he added, seeing the expressions on the human faces that
surrounded him.

"You're just ahead of your time, boy." McGeachin clapped him on the
shoulder. "But you're right. Why can't man co-exist with the machine?
Why can't robots paint pictures and write books and compose operas,
while people work in the factories? Don't know just yet how it'll work
out in the factories, but it'll be a great day for art!"

"We're going to have to give the money back," Mr. Replogle said dully.

"What money?" McGeachin asked, obviously annoyed by this anticlimactic
remark.

"The money paid for Orville's pictures. We cheated the
buyers--unwittingly, it is true, but we cheated them nonetheless. We
sold the pictures as hand-mades. They're machined."

"But I have hands," Orville protested.

Mr. Ditmars shook his head. "You're a machine. Replogle is right.
Cimabue is ruined."

"I'll make good your losses," McGeachin said in his crisp, metallic
voice, and just then Mr. Replogle knew what had been bothering him all
along about the financier. Despite his completely hand-made costume
McGeachin looked exactly like a robot. The triumph of environment over
heredity--or was it as simple as that, Mr. Replogle wondered. Everyone
knew who Hervey McGeachin's father was, but who had his mother been?

"No one can make good our losses," Mr. Ditmars told him. "Modern art
has suffered a crushing blow from which it will never recover. The
handwriting is on the wall."

"You mean the typewriting," Mr. Replogle said.