The Day After Judgement Read Online Free PDF

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     up of demons – not so, Colonel?’
    ‘Sir… we can’t tell what they are. We were wondering if they were, well, Martians or something. Every one is a different shape.’
    Buelg felt his back hairs stirring. ‘I refuse to believe this nonsense,’ he said. ‘Šatvje is interpreting it from his damnedobsolete “education”. Even Martians would make more sense.’
    ‘What are the facts about this Dante?’ McKnight said.
    ‘An Italian poet, of about the thirteenth century – ’
    ‘Early fourteenth,’ Šatvje said. ‘And not just a poet. He had a vision of Hell and Heaven which became the greatest poem ever
     written – the
Divine Comedy.
What we see in those pictures exactly corresponds to the description in Cantos Eight through Eleven of it.’
    ‘Buelg, see if you can locate a copy of the book and have it read to the computer. First we need to know if the correspondence
     is all that exact. If it is, we’ll need an analysis of what it means.’
    ‘The computer probably already has the book,’ Buelg said. ‘The whole Library of Congress, plus all our recreational library,
     is on microfilm inside it, we didn’t have room for books per se down here. All we need to do is tell Chief Hay to make it
     part of the problem. But I still think it’s damn nonsense.’
    ‘What we want,’ McKnight said, ‘is the computer’s opinion. Yours has already been shown to be somewhat less reliable.’
    ‘And while you’re at it,’ Šatvje said, perhaps a shade less smugly than Buelg might have expected, ‘have Chief Hay make a
     part of the problem everything in the library on demonology. We’re going to need it.’
    Throwing up his hands, Buelg left the office. In the country of the mad…
    Nobody retains his sanity.
    Only a few moments were needed for the computer to produce its report:
    T HE ANCIENT TEXTS AND FICTIONS NOW ADMITTED TO THE PROBLEM DISAGREE WITH EACH OTHER. H OWEVER, NEW FACTUAL DATA MAKE EXACT MATCHES WITH A NUMBER OF THEM, AND APPROXIMATE MATCHES WITH THE MAJORITY OF THEM. T HE ASSUMPTION THAT THE CONSTRUCT IN D EATH V ALLEY IS R USSIAN, C HINESE OR OTHERWISE OF HUMAN ORIGIN IS OF THE LOWEST ORDER OF PROBABILITY AND MAY BE DISCOUNTED. T HE INTERPLANETARY HYPOTHESIS IS OF SLIGHTLY HIGHER PROBABILITY, AN INVASION FROM V ENUS BEING COMPATIBLE WITH A FEW OF THE FACTUAL DATA, SUCH AS THE IMMENSE HEAT AND ABERRANT LIFEFORMS OF THE D EATH V ALLEY INSTALLATION, BUT IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH MOST ARCHITECTURAL AND OTHER HISTORICAL DETAILS IN THE DATA, AS WELL AS WITH
     THE LEVEL OF TECHNOLOGY INDICATED. T HE PROBABILITY THAT THE D EATH V ALLEY INSTALLATION IS THE C ITY OF D IS AND THAT ITS INTERNAL AREA IS N ETHER H ELL IS 0.1 WITHIN A S PER CENT LEVEL OF CONFIDENCE, AND THEREFORE MUST BE ADMITTED. A S A FIRST DERIVATIVE, THE PROBABILITY THAT THE WAR JUST CONCLUDED WAS A RMAGEDDON IS 0.01 WITHIN THE SAME CONFIDENCE LEVEL. A S A SECOND DERIVATIVE, THE PROBABILITY THAT THE FORCES OF G OD HAVE LOST THE WAR AND THAT THE SURFACE OF THE E ARTH IS NOW CONFLUENT WITH U PPER H ELL IS 0.001 WITHIN THE SAME CONFIDENCE LEVEL.
    ‘Well, that clarifies the situation considerably,’ McKnight said. ‘It’s just as well we asked.’
    ‘But – my God! – it simply can’t be true,’ Buelg said desperately. ‘All right, maybe the computer is functioning properly,
     but it has no intelligence, and above all, no judgement. What it’s putting out now is just a natural consequence of letting
     all that medieval superstition into the problem.’
    McKnight turned his shrimp’s eyes towards Buelg. ‘You’ve seen the pictures,’ he said. ‘They didn’t come out of the computer,
     did they? Nor out of the old books, either. I think we’d better stop kicking against the pricks and start figuring out what
     we’re going to do. We’ve still got the United States to think of. Doctor Šatvje, have you any suggestions?’
    That was a bad sign. McKnight never used honorifics except to indicate, by inversion, which of the