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When she was finished, George rummaged around inside the crate. Jane peered over his shoulder. “It’s like a museum in there.”
“Or a junkyard.” George picked up round, cylindrical metal containers, each with a faded label. He realized they were cans of food, preserved chili and soup. He sniffed one of the cans, smelling nothing but old metal. The picture on the label certainly looked unappetizing.
“Why would anybody want this stuff?” Jane asked. “Do you suppose that means Uncle Asimov didn’t even have a food replicator out in the desert?”
“I don’t think he even had electricity, Jane. Maybe not ru
The maidbot buzzed her disapproval while Jane shuddered in horror.
Next, he found actual hard copies of books and magazines so old that the paper was brown and crumbly. Underneath those was a stack of yellowed newspapers, wasteful old-fashioned informational devices that were published only once daily, regardless of how often the actual news changed.
George was still digging items out of the crate when his blonde teenage daughter, Judy, and his boy, Elroy, arrived home from the preprogrammed school simulations. Seeing the crate and instantly assuming they had received gifts from someone, Judy let out a delighted shriek, then frowned in disappointment.
George had picked up a pack of a powdery brown substance that smelled vaguely like a cup of coffee from the food replicator, though he couldn’t see how the ground substance could turn itself into coffee. Next to it was a strange contraption, like a pitcher made of metal. He took the pieces apart but couldn’t understand their function.
Boisterous Elroy piped up, “That’s a coffee percolator, Pop! We studied that in ancient history class.”
“A coffee percolator? You mean Uncle Asimov had a special machine just to make coffee?” George held up the filter basket, peering through the tiny holes. “Can it be reprogrammed to do other things?”
“No, Pop. You add the water yourself and then…” he hesitated. “Well, then you do something to it. I wasn’t exactly paying attention in class.”
“Tell you what, Elroy-if you figure out how this percolator works, I’ll consider it your ancient history homework. Afterward, what do you say we spend some quality time together? We can watch those holos of people throwing a baseball back and forth.”
“Gee, Pop, I’ll do it!” The boy spent two whole minutes digging through one informational archive after another until he found a set of rigorously detailed instructions. After all that effort, George certainly considered that the boy had earned his reward…
Much later, exhausted from watching the holos of people engaged in strenuous exercise, George tucked Elroy into bed, patted the kid on the head, then went about his evening routine. He went back to look at the coffee percolator, perplexed. He thought of his mysterious and eccentric uncle, unable to understand what could have driven the old man to shun everyday modern conveniences. Why would Uncle Asimov intentionally make his life more difficult than it needed to be? As George read through the complicated instructions, on a whim, he decided to go through the process.
He opened the package of ground beans, assembled the gadget’s components, then asked the household computer to find an adapter so that he could plug the machine into the power grid. The coffee-making steps were quite intricate, and George had never done anything so convoluted before. It took him three separate tries before he finally figured it out. “People used to go through a great many tribulations just to make a simple cup of coffee,” he said to himself. Uncle Asimov had presumably gone through the grueling process every single day!
When George was finished, however, listening to the gurgle of water pumping through the filter basket and grounds, it all made a certain amount of sense to him. When the smell of coffee rose into the air, it seemed delicious, fresh.
Jane came out, ready for bed. Sniffing the air, she looked at him and the coffee percolator. “George, dear, what are you doing?”
Triumphantly, he said, “I’m making coffee.”
“If you want coffee, just tell the replicator to make you a cup.”
“It’s an experiment, dear. Let’s try some.” He burned his fingers as he lifted the percolator from the wrong end, then poured two cups of the steaming black liquid.
Jane came forward skeptically. “It smells like any other cup of coffee.”
He drew in a deep breath, then took a sip. “Deliious! I think it’s better than what the replicator makes.”
Jane took a drink with great trepidation, as if afraid the old hermit’s supplies might be laced with some unusual toxin. “It tastes exactly the same as the coffee we usually drink, George.”
But he insisted that wasn’t so. Perhaps the very effort he had expended in making the hot beverage increased his own satisfaction. Jane was not sure what to make of this change in her husband’s behavior. He gave her a peck on the cheek. “You can go to bed without me, dear. I think I’ll stay up a while longer.”
She went to bed, leaving him to his unusual preoccupation. George drank the cup of coffee, then poured a second one.
He picked the faded old magazines from the crate and gingerly began thumbing through the pages. Uncle Asimov had kept these publications for so many years. How many times had he read them? George considered feeding the pages into the automatic reader so he could enjoy the articles. Then, drawing a deep breath and setting his jaw with determination, he sat back with his hand-made cup of coffee and read the words for himself. He found it quite an unusual experience. Though he hadn’t intended to, George stayed up long into the night.
The next day at his job in the factory, George looked down at the industrial line, the clanking conveyor belts, the whirring robot arms busily producing the best sprockets money could buy, the mechanical inspectors that monitored all the steps in the operation. Wearing his supervisor’s cap and uniform, George stood at his post and watched the robots, just as he had done every day in his career.
Though he was a supervisor, George didn’t exactly know what he was doing. The more he thought about it, he realized that he had never really known what he was doing.
He saw his boss in the glassed-in office, lording it over the assembly line. He was a short, balding man with dark hair and a large moustache. George had always thought of him as a good boss, though the man’s temper was often on a short fuse. George had never really thought about it before, but he didn’t quite understand what his boss did either. His job seemed to entail looking down at George and his fellow supervisors, as they in turn looked down at the robotic assembly line. The robots automatically did everything on their own.
George left his station, his brow furrowed with questions. He took the whirring lift platform that raised him up the boss’s office. The balding man was quite surprised to see him.
“Why have you left your post? That simply isn’t done!”
“But why not, Mr. S?” He fumbled to articulate his question. “What am I actually doing down there?”
“The assembly line can’t be run without you. A supervisor at every station, and a station for every supervisor. How do you expect sprockets to be made and for us to meet our inventory goals if you shirk your duties? The whole company depends on you, um-” He looked at the name patch on George’s shirt. “George.”
“But, sir, what is my job? I don’t even know what a sprocket is.”
The boss scratched his moustache and sat down at his desk. “George, don’t ask me such complicated questions. Sprockets are vitally important items, and you’ve got a job to do.”
“Actually, sir, the robots are doing it. They run everything on the assembly line. In all my years of working here at the sprocket factory I haven’t had to push a single button.”