The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Real Thing, by Albert Teichner

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Title: The Real Thing

Author: Albert Teichner

Release Date: February 1, 2020 [EBook #61288]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REAL THING ***




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"Everything in this wing is genuine old fake," Stahl told the two tourists while his wife clung proudly to his arm. Like him, she was tall, blonde and impossibly good-looking.

"Even this strongbox money is finest American counterfeit," she said.

"May I see it?" asked Smith. The lifeless face of the mathematician brightened as he peered through the quartz top at a dollar bill marked W8265286A. "I can only get the worthless real stuff. Ancient governments always destroyed counterfeits. But you're in Economic Planning, so it must be easier to get good fakes."

"Only the merest imperfection, that slight Mongoloid fold in Washington's left eyelid," Stahl replied, tightly encircling his wife's waist as if showing off all his finest possessions simultaneously. He glanced at Tinker, a cyberneticist who, like Smith, had sent several requests to see the famous Suite of Artifices. "Ever try collecting?"

"Not money," Tinker answered, eyes still on Mrs. Stahl.

"Got the 'Mongoloid' bill five years ago, same year as I got Mary." He gave his wife an even more ostentatious squeeze. Smith stared at her, too, but more with dull dissatisfaction than desire. "Fifteen bills in the box now—but I've still only one wife."

"Fifteen!" exclaimed Smith. "The rich get richer and the poor stay poor."

"The wallpaper," Stahl smoothly proceeded, "is a replica of Italian murals. If you adjust your focus properly the flat columns become solids through the art of vanishing-point perspective."

"Excellent period distortion of Greek styles," said Tinker, studying the columns. "And those three chairs are fine copies of Chippendale. You're to be complimented on your taste in everything, Stahl."

"You really know ancient designs," Stahl said. "Genuine old copies are even scarcer than their originals. And originals, of course, can never be quite as good."

"Sometimes I don't see why," Smith muttered.

They all looked shocked. "Smith, you need a checkup," Tinker advised. "You sound rundown. How can we progress without imitating past achievements?"

"A little rundown," Smith admitted, "but.... Oh, let's forget it."

"Let's," Stahl nodded, striving to recapture the pair's attention as they went on through the Suite. "Notice the paintings. Those two are excellent pseudo-Braques and in the last room were fine fakes of Van Gogh, Picasso and Chardin. In fact," he pointed toward a Gauguin-like nude, all flattened sensuousness, "that one's as close to a real Gauguin as an imitation can go without being a mere reproduction."

They all gasped and even Smith shook his head reverently. "To be that close to the real thing! It's all you'd ever need."

"Becoming more possible all the time." Tinker grinned suggestively at Mrs. Stahl. She looked back, mildly interested. "We'll get there eventually."

Happily oblivious to everything but his collections, Stahl led them into the library. One wall, covered with rows of book spines, swung around to reveal a well-stocked bar. There was also a large bar across the room which quickly became a library of real books and recording systems.

"I'm not much for eating and drinking," Smith protested feebly.

"Who is?" Mrs. Stahl laughed. "But this must be a special occasion for you."

Eyes bulging nervously, Smith ran his fingers through his luxuriant hair and sighed, "Special it is. All right."

Stahl casually mixed drinks for them all and sipped an Old Fashioned. "I've concentrated somewhat more on the twentieth century of the Old Times than any other," he said. "A particularly intriguing century, I find, although not crucial like the twenty-first, of course."

"The crucial one," Tinker protested.

"As a fellow antiquarian, I must beg to differ, sir."

"What about rocket travel, Mr. Stahl? When did that begin?"

"Old hat," he yawned.

"And atomic energy?"

"Same applies there. Look, Tinker, don't get me wrong. I love the period. But, objectively viewed, the twenty-first makes the great difference."

"And what about duplication of life functions, like the mechanical heart? That really got started in the twentieth."

"Absolutely right," Smith nodded vigorously.

"All strictly mechanical," Stahl sighed. "But the twenty-first turned the study of pain and pleasure itself from an art into a true science."

"No, no," scoffed the cyberneticist.

Stahl pounded the bar. "All right, I'm going to prove it by putting on an All-Sense Feeliescope of Thomas Dyall. It's fully sense-adapted, so it should pick up perfectly."

"Hope it isn't noisy," said Smith.

"It's beautiful," answered Mary Stahl. "I could listen to it all day."

The odor of damp, new-mown grass filled the room and another more elusive scent mingled with it. Entry of June 3rd, 2068, said an impersonal, mechanical voice, from the journal of Thomas Dyall, elected World's First Poet Laureate in 2089. A warm rich bass took over:

The following note, interrupted the monotone voice, was added by the author in the year 2116:

"Interesting," Tinker said, "although we all know now that one thing cannot be substituted for. Also—"

"No discussion now," pleaded Smith. "You need a while to consider all that. Anyway, I've been thinking about your bill, Stahl. That wasn't a fold on Washington's eyelid, just a tiny inkstain. It's genuine."

"It can't be," Stahl snapped and angrily led them back to the first room. "Tinker, I want you as my witness."

He handed the bill around and Smith had to concede it was really counterfeit. "What's that next one?" he asked.

"A ten." Stahl hesitated, then took it off the pile along with three others and passed them to the visitors, showing off fine points of imitation. When he collected the bills he carefully made certain there were still five and locked them up again.

"What about another drink?" Smith asked hastily.

"No." Tinker sat down in a large chair. "Let's straighten out something right now, Stahl. Dyall was making the first crude statement of an obvious truth. If we have a pleasant sensation it doesn't matter whether it's caused by a rose or a chemical imitation of a rose or by making a brain imagine a rose—doesn't matter except that the real rose itself is the hardest thing to control. So it can't be as intensely real as its imitations."

"Mr. Tinker, isn't that crucial enough for you?" Mrs. Stahl asked. Her voice was so rich and warmly rounded that Smith stared wonderingly at her, as if trying to fathom an alien tongue.

"Not quite," Tinker shrugged. "Stahl, you're discussing the smallest aspect of the three-part equation, Stimulus + Stimulated Body = Experience. Your poet was saying certain changes in Stimulus would still give a Stimulated Body the same Experience as the original. But the philosophers and cyberneticists, they already suspected something more radical. If the Stimulated Body was properly changed, the same Stimulus could give different Bodies the same Experience. In other words, a properly-arranged process would have the same Experience as the life function for which it was substituted."

"Now then," he went on, "all life reproduces itself, right? Well, they finally figured the most important thing to reproduce was a man's Experience itself, not any particular form of Stimulated Body. Of course we have higher ideals. We want the Stimulated Body to be as nearly like what it was as possible—then we can have the best of all possible worlds."

"Some people," Smith grumbled, "don't get their fair share of that best."

"Anyway I hate all theories," said Mrs. Stahl.

Stahl disregarded them as he stared at his cashbox. "My money," he said ominously, "has been changed!"

The two visitors exchanged nervous glances. "That's not possible," said Tinker.

"It is. Somebody's palmed a real one as a substitute!"

"That's very unfair," Smith protested. "We came here as guests, strangers to you and to each other. We've given you the correct degree of envious admiration and now you show your gratitude for our human reaction by saying we're deranged!"

Stahl was unmoved. "I still say it's been stolen." He opened the box. "See—the dollar's different! When the people of the Old Times made us their heirs and children they left piles of this real stuff around along with almost everything else they'd made. It's practically worthless!"

Tinker frowned uncertainly. "If it makes you feel better I'll submit to a lie-detector. I hope you're capable of feeling shame when it proves my innocence!"

"Good enough," said Stahl, turning expectantly to his other guest. As he waited, Smith pulled back a little.

"Well?" Mary smiled, moving a little toward him.

Smith leaped away from her, heading toward an open window, but the others moved faster and grabbed him before he reached the wall.

"What's the matter with you anyway?" Tinker grunted, straining to hold him. "The window's painted on the wall!"

Smith slumped forward in despair as Stahl triumphantly wormed the valued counterfeit from his pocket. "I can't do anything right," Smith wailed. "I heard about this collection and thought I could manage to get one little thing for myself. I haven't been given much else by life."

"You—you defective!" Stahl shouted.

Smith only slumped further forward. "How can I help it? The Monte Carlo computer gave me one of the last places for advanced altering and I have to wait and wait. Compared to you, I'm still a half-breed!"

"Don't hand me that," Stahl snapped. "I didn't mean physical defects. You look as normal as anyone else."

"No, darling, I think he's telling the truth," Mary said sympathetically. "When altering began it was only skin-deep for all of us."

"I'll bet you're sixty per cent altered already," Smith cried out. "It's my bad luck to be only twenty-five per cent so far. All I can do is look at her and wonder why the two of you make such a fuss."

The cyberneticist tried to calm him. "Your turn's coming."

"I have to find out what it's about sooner than that!"

Tinker sighed. "I'll try to get your number advanced."

"Let him wait his turn," Stahl said coldly. "He's faking a lot anyway."

At that Smith broke free from them and pressed his back to the optical illusion window. "Don't come closer," he warned. "I don't have much to lose."

They stopped a few feet away and waited. Suddenly he raised his left hand to his face and dug the long nails in a semicircle into his flesh. As a thin stream of locally circulated blood gushed out, he dug deeper and the eyeball fell forward, quivering, on his cheek.

"He was telling the truth!" Stahl gasped, pointing at the glittering metal bits within the eyesocket. A glowing wire was slowly evaporating on the retinal plate as optical feedback collapsed.

Tinker, all professional competence now, helped Smith to a chair. "We'll be able to repair you in a month," he said, "because you've a simpler arrangement, and I can promise you'll have as good an electro-chemical near-cortex as anybody. And the other more interesting changes too."

Stahl glanced at his wife, then, as she nodded back, slowly put his precious counterfeit into the dangling hand. He was pleased to see enough consciousness was still functioning enough for the fingers to close greedily around it. "Keep it," he said, "you deserve it more than me."

Suddenly he realised he was feeling not only shame but pity too! It was the first time for pity—and that meant he was one step further on his own journey.

How far that journey had already taken him! For, when their brilliant labors had dehumanized them, the humans had possessed sufficient understanding to pass the dead world on to the superior wisdom of their creations. If they had been unable to foresee what would eventually happen, Stahl and his fellow robots could. Some day the supreme knowledge and the supreme feeling would be perfectly wedded, the day they became truly humanoid copies of their makers.

He moved forward, Tinker following him, to help his fellow creature closer to that common final destiny.

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