The Umbrella Man and Other Stories (2 page)

“It’s a delicious idea, but so impracticable it doesn’t really bear thinking about at all.”

From then on, Adolph Knipe began to think about nothing else. The idea fascinated him enormously, at first because it gave him a promise—however remote—of revenging himself in a most devilish manner upon his greatest enemies. From this angle alone, he toyed idly with it for perhaps ten or fifteen minutes; then all at once he found himself examining it quite seriously as a practical possibility. He took paper and made some preliminary notes. But he didn’t get far. He found himself, almost immediately, up against the old truth that a machine, however ingenious, is incapable of original thought. It can handle no problems except those that resolve themselves into mathematical terms—problems that contain one, and only one, correct answer.

This was a stumper. There didn’t seem any way around it. A machine cannot have a brain. On the other hand, it
can
have a memory,
can it not? Their own electronic calculator had a marvellous memory. Simply by converting electric pulses, through a column of mercury, into supersonic waves, it could store away at least a thousand numbers at a time, extracting any one of them at the precise moment it was needed. Would it not be possible, therefore, on this principle, to build a memory section of almost unlimited size?

Now what about that?

Then suddenly, he was struck by a powerful but simple little truth, and it was this:
that English grammar is governed by rules that are almost mathematical in their strictness!
Given the words, and given the sense of what is to be said, then there is only one correct order in which those words can be arranged.

No, he thought, that isn’t quite accurate. In many sentences there are several alternative positions for words and phrases, all of which may be grammatically correct. But what the hell. The theory itself is basically true. Therefore, it stands to reason that an engine built along the lines of the electric computer could be adjusted to arrange words (instead of numbers) in their right order according to the rules of grammar. Give it the verbs, the nouns, the adjectives, the pronouns, store them in the memory section as a vocabulary, and arrange for them to be extracted as required. Then feed it with plots and leave it to write the sentences.

There was no stopping Knipe now. He went to work immediately, and there followed during the next few days a period of intense labour. The living room became littered with sheets of paper: formulae and calculations; lists of words, thousands and thousands of words; the plots of stories, curiously broken up and subdivided; huge extracts from
Roget’s Thesaurus
; pages filled with the first
names of men and women; hundreds of surnames taken from the telephone directory; intricate drawings of wires and circuits and switches and thermionic valves; drawings of machines that could punch holes of different shapes in little cards, and of a strange electric typewriter that could type ten thousand words a minute. Also a kind of control panel with a series of small push buttons, each one labelled with the name of a famous American magazine.

He was working in a mood of exultation, prowling around the room amidst this littering of paper, rubbing his hands together, talking out loud to himself; and sometimes, with a sly curl of the nose he would mutter a series of murderous imprecations in which the word “editor” seemed always to be present. On the fifteenth day of continuous work, he collected the papers into two large folders which he carried—almost at a run—to the offices of John Bohlen Inc., electrical engineers.

Mr. Bohlen was pleased to see him back.

“Well Knipe, good gracious me, you look a hundred per cent better. You have a good holiday? Where’d you go?”

He’s just as ugly and untidy as ever, Mr. Bohlen thought. Why doesn’t he stand up straight? He looks like a bent stick. “You look a hundred per cent better, my boy.” I wonder what he’s grinning about. Every time I see him, his ears seem to have got larger.

Adolph Knipe placed the folders on the desk. “Look, Mr. Bohlen!” he cried. “Look at these!”

Then he poured out his story. He opened the folders and pushed the plans in front of the astonished little man. He talked for over an hour, explaining everything, and when he had finished, he stepped back, breathless, flushed, waiting for the verdict.

“You know what I think, Knipe? I think you’re nuts.” Careful now, Mr. Bohlen told himself. Treat him carefully. He’s valuable, this one is. If only he didn’t look so awful, with that long horse face and the big teeth. The fellow had ears as big as rhubarb leaves.

“But Mr. Bohlen! It’ll work! I’ve proved to you it’ll work! You can’t deny that!”

“Take it easy now, Knipe. Take it easy, and listen to me.”

Adolph Knipe watched his man, disliking him more every second.

“This idea,” Mr. Bohlen’s lower lip was saying, “is very ingenious—I might almost say brilliant—and it only goes to confirm my opinion of your abilities, Knipe. But don’t take it too seriously. After all, my boy, what possible use can it be to us? Who on earth wants a machine for writing stories? And where’s the money in it, anyway? Just tell me that.”

“May I sit down, sir?”

“Sure, take a seat.”

Adolph Knipe seated himself on the edge of a chair. The older man watched him with alert brown eyes, wondering what was coming now.

“I would like to explain something Mr. Bohlen, if I may, about how I came to do all this.”

“Go right ahead, Knipe.” He would have to be humoured a little now, Mr. Bohlen told himself. The boy was really valuable—a sort of genius, almost—worth his weight in gold to the firm. Just look at these papers here. Darndest thing you ever saw. Astonishing piece of work. Quite useless, of course. No commercial value. But it proved again the boy’s ability.

“It’s a sort of confession, I suppose, Mr. Bohlen. I think it explains why I’ve always been so . . . so kind of worried.”

“You tell me anything you want, Knipe. I’m here to help you—you know that.”

The young man clasped his hands together tight on his lap, hugging himself with his elbows. It seemed as though suddenly he was feeling very cold.

“You see, Mr. Bohlen, to tell the honest truth, I don’t really care much for my work here. I know I’m good at it and all that sort of thing, but my heart’s not in it. It’s not what I want to do most.”

Up went Mr. Bohlen’s eyebrows, quick like a spring. His whole body became very still.

“You see, sir, all my life I’ve wanted to be a writer.”

“A writer!”

“Yes, Mr. Bohlen. You may not believe it, but every bit of spare time I’ve had, I’ve spent writing stories. In the last ten years I’ve written hundreds, literally hundreds of short stories. Five hundred and sixty-six, to be precise. Approximately one a week.”

“Good heavens, man! What on earth did you do that for?”

“All I know, sir, is I have the urge.”

“What sort of urge?”

“The creative urge, Mr. Bohlen.” Every time he looked up he saw Mr. Bohlen’s lips. They were growing thinner and thinner, more and more purple.

“And may I ask you what you do with these stories, Knipe?”

“Well sir, that’s the trouble. No one will buy them. Each time I finish one, I send it out on the rounds. It goes to one magazine after
another. That’s all that happens, Mr. Bohlen, and they simply send them back. It’s very depressing.”

Mr. Bohlen relaxed. “I can see quite well how you feel, my boy.” His voice was dripping with sympathy. “We all go through it one time or another in our lives. But now—now that you’ve had proof—positive proof—from the experts themselves, from the editors, that your stories are—what shall I say—rather unsuccessful, it’s time to leave off. Forget it, my boy. Just forget all about it.”

“No, Mr. Bohlen! No! That’s not true! I
know
my stories are good. My heavens, when you compare them with the stuff some of those magazines print—oh my word, Mr. Bohlen!—the sloppy, boring stuff that you see in the magazines week after week—why, it drives me mad!”

“Now wait a minute, my boy . . . ”

“Do you ever read the magazines, Mr. Bohlen?”

“You’ll pardon me, Knipe, but what’s all this got to do with your machine?”

“Everything, Mr. Bohlen, absolutely everything! What I want to tell you is, I’ve made a study of magazines, and it seems that each one tends to have its own particular type of story. The writers—the successful ones—know this, and they write accordingly.”

“Just a minute, my boy. Calm yourself down, will you. I don’t think all this is getting us anywhere.”

“
Please
, Mr. Bohlen, hear me through. It’s all terribly important.” He paused to catch his breath. He was properly worked up now, throwing his hands around as he talked. The long, toothy face, with the big ears on either side, simply shone with enthusiasm,
and there was an excess of saliva in his mouth which caused him to speak his words wet. “So you see, on my machine, by having an adjustable coordinator between the ‘plot-memory’ section and the ‘word-memory’ section I am able to produce any type of story I desire simply by pressing the required button.”

“Yes, I know, Knipe, I know. This is all very interesting, but what’s the point of it?”

“Just this, Mr. Bohlen. The market is limited. We’ve got to be able to produce the right stuff, at the right time, whenever we want it. It’s a matter of business, that’s all. I’m looking at it from
your
point of view now—as a commercial proposition.”

“My dear boy, it can’t possibly be a commercial proposition—ever. You know as well as I do what it costs to build one of these machines.”

“Yes sir, I do. But with due respect, I don’t believe you know what the magazines pay writers for stories.”

“What do they pay?”

“Anything up to twenty-five hundred dollars. It probably averages around a thousand.”

Mr. Bohlen jumped.

“Yes
sir
, it’s true.”

“Absolutely impossible, Knipe! Ridiculous!”

“No sir, it’s true.”

“You mean to sit there and tell me that these magazines pay out money like that to a man for . . . just for scribbling off a story! Good heavens, Knipe! Whatever next! Writers must all be millionaires!”

“That’s exactly it, Mr. Bohlen! That’s where the machine comes in. Listen a minute, sir, while I tell you some more. I’ve got it all worked out. The big magazines are carrying approximately three fiction stories in each issue. Now, take the fifteen most important magazines—the ones paying the most money. A few of them are monthlies, but most of them come out every week. All right. That makes, let us say, around forty big stories being bought each week. That’s forty thousand dollars. So with our machine—when we get it working properly—we can collar nearly the whole of this market!”

“My dear boy, you’re mad!”

“No sir, honestly, it’s true what I say. Don’t you see that with volume alone we’ll completely overwhelm them! This machine can produce a five-thousand-word story, all typed and ready for dispatch, in thirty seconds. How can the writers compete with that? I ask you, Mr. Bohlen,
how?
”

At that point, Adolph Knipe noticed a slight change in the man’s expression, an extra brightness in the eyes, the nostrils distending, the whole face becoming still, almost rigid. Quickly, he continued. “Nowadays, Mr. Bohlen, the handmade article hasn’t a hope. It can’t possibly compete with mass production, especially in this country—you know that. Carpets . . . chairs . . . shoes . . . bricks . . . crockery . . . anything you like to mention—they’re all made by machinery now. The quality may be inferior, but that doesn’t matter. It’s the cost of production that counts. And stories—well—they’re just another product, like carpets and chairs, and no one cares how you produce them so long as you deliver the
goods. We’ll sell them wholesale, Mr. Bohlen! We’ll undercut every writer in the country! We’ll corner the market!”

Mr. Bohlen edged up straighter in his chair. He was leaning forward now, both elbows on the desk, the face alert, the small brown eyes resting on the speaker.

“I still think it’s impracticable, Knipe.”

“Forty thousand a week!” cried Adolph Knipe. “And if we halve the price, making it twenty thousand a week, that’s still a million a year!” And softly he added, “You didn’t get any million a year for building the old electronic calculator, did you, Mr. Bohlen?”

“But seriously now, Knipe. D’you really think they’d buy them?”

“Listen, Mr. Bohlen. Who on earth is going to want custom-made stories when they can get the other kind at half the price? It stands to reason, doesn’t it?”

“And how will you sell them? Who will you say has written them?”

“We’ll set up our own literary agency, and we’ll distribute them through that. And we’ll invent all the names we want for the writers.”

“I don’t like it, Knipe. To me, that smacks of trickery, does it not?”

“And another thing, Mr. Bohlen. There’s all manner of valuable by-products once you’ve got started. Take advertising, for example. Beer manufacturers and people like that are willing to pay good money these days if famous writers will lend their names to their products. Why, my heavens, Mr. Bohlen! This isn’t any children’s plaything we’re talking about. It’s big business.”

“Don’t get too ambitious, my boy.”

“And another thing. There isn’t any reason why we shouldn’t put
your
name, Mr. Bohlen, on some of the better stories, if you wished it.”

“My goodness, Knipe. What should I want that for?”

“I don’t know, sir, except that some writers get to be very much respected—like Mr. Erle Gardner or Kathleen Morris, for example. We’ve got to have names, and I was certainly thinking of using my own on one or two stories, just to help out.”

“A writer, eh?” Mr. Bohlen said, musing. “Well, it would surely surprise them over at the club when they saw my name in the magazines—the good magazines.”

“That’s right, Mr. Bohlen!”

For a moment, a dreamy, faraway look came into Mr. Bohlen’s eyes, and he smiled. Then he stirred himself and began leafing through the plans that lay before him.

“One thing I don’t quite understand, Knipe. Where do the plots come from? The machine can’t possibly invent plots.”