They'd Rather Be Right Read Online Free PDF Page B

phrases.
    . As revised ... authorized ... official ... top secret ..... Rogan apparently liked the sound of the governmental jargon, and gave each phase a full measure of expression.
    Gradually the sense of the order became dimly apparent through all the legal phrasing. As Billings had feared, it was an old problem, just now coming to light.
    That was significant, even though only a few men might recognize it. Not one new principle had come out of the universities in the past thirty years. Not one problem had arisen which hadn’t been foreseen then. It was as if something geared to tremendous momentum had had powerful brakes applied. The forward movement seemed to continue satisfactorily; yet it was apparent to anyone who cared to look that it was grinding to a halt.
    Odd how the human mind, once it became conscious of the unyielding pressure of limits and restrictions, refused to think constructively. There was a lot of loose talk about the indestructibility of the human will, how it strove onward and upward, overcoming all obstacles. But that was just talk, of the most irresponsible kind. Actually the human will to progress was the most delicate mechanism imaginable, and refused to work at all if conditions were not precisely right.
    In the half million years man had been on earth, there were only twenty occasions when he had been able to pull himself up beyond the primitive animal level. It was significant, too, that most of these gener-ated their forward momentum in one spurt, and often within one lifetime. Momentum reached its point where rulers became satisfied and clamped down restrictions against any change of the status quo. Then began, over and over in each civilization, the slow retrogression and the long night.
    In the typical fashion of governmental directives, the order said the same thing over and over, yet never succeeded in saying outright what it meant. Man’s inventive techniques had outstripped his reaction time possibilities. A plane, hurtling into an unforeseen di-saster, would strike it before the pilot could become aware of the danger and react to avert it.
    To protect his own life, man had had to place a limit upon the speed of his vehicles. True, he tried to cope with the situation by inventing servomechanisms, but most of these merely registered their findings upon a dial. The cockpits of ships became a solid wall of dials. No human eye could read all their messages simultaneously and react as they directed.
    And, too, the servomechanisms, intricate and marvelous though they might be, were blind and senseless things, capable of following only one design of action.
    Only the human mind was sufficiently flexible to vary the patterns of behavior to meet the variation of possible circumstances. But the human mind was too slow, too inefficient, too easily distorted. It was—an understatement—undependable.
    Billings watched the unfolding of the inexorable logic in the order with a growing dread which began to mount to the level of horror. For it was clear to him where the logic must lead. Since we did have weapons, the order pursued its line of thinking, which could seek out a target, follow it, strike and destroy it; the work of Hoxworth University was quite simple, and should require little time or tax monies.
    The university was simply required to reverse the known mechanical principle and see that a plane, or an automobile, or other moving vehicle, struck nothing!
    The order ended with its usual propaganda. Thus the citizens could see that, once again, out of war came great benefits to peace.
     
    Rogan closed the stiff back page of the order and looked up at Billings with an expression of satisfaction at having delivered the government’s instructions con-cisely and completely.
    “In other words,” Billings said slowly, “they want a servomechanism designed which can foresee the fu-ture, and work out a pattern of mechanical operation which will cope with that future at the time it becomes