Satire is tragedy plus time.
—Lenny Bruce
Carlton became aware that someone was watching him. Someone who didn’t belong in Electronics. A red-haired boy was flipping over the pages of a book, but he wasn’t reading it. He kept glancing through the glass wall to check on Carlton. They had left him on a gurney at the end of the lab while they debated what to do with him. He had made it clear he wouldn’t let them prod around inside him anymore.
“I have far too much valuable stuff in here to lose,” he told them.
“Of course you do,” they said, humoring him.
“Suppose you accidentally wiped some of my comedy files? How would you ever forgive yourselves?”
“Oh horror,” said the electrologist.
“We could never live with ourselves again,” said Jeff. “It would be intellectual vandalism.”
“To lose all that valuable work on comedy. Mankind would never forgive us, you’re right.”
“Be worse than the burning of the Alexandrian library.”
He thought he detected more than a whiff of irony in their enthusiasm, but as long as they left him alone, that was the main thing.
“Well, I think that must be lunch then,” said the electrologist.
“I’m buying the beer,” said Jeff. “To think how close we came to destroying perhaps the most important single discovery in the entire history of evolution.”
They went off laughing.
Let them mock. They’d see. Then they’d kick themselves. He needed to get out of here, but the orderly at the door was serious heavy metal, and that redheaded boy was still watching him. What did he want anyway? He couldn’t wait to get out and tell Alex and Lewis about his Theory of Levity. They were going to be so proud of him. He had solved the problem of comedy. Now they might not even have to do it anymore. I can cure them of comedy, he thought proudly. He began working on some funny equations.
It was towards the end of the lunch break when he noticed two men come in and begin talking to the redhead. A tall blond Swede and a shorter, more muscular man. They were talking intently to the boy. He could see them through the glass in the waiting area. He watched all three nod, turn, and try to enter the lab area. The security robot, burly in his blue serge uniform, stood up and blocked their way. Carlton pricked up his long-range ears and found they were talking about him. There was quite an argument, something to do with recycling.
“We need to take him immediately for recycling,” said the shorter man.
“No, I don’t think so,” said the security orderly, shaking his head. “I know he’s doo-lally but he’s on hold.”
“I have a recycling order signed by Mr. Keppler himself,” said the blond Swede. “Look, here it is. Read it for yourself. For immediate recycling.”
“Oh,” said the orderly, “they must have changed their minds.”
“Of course they have, now just sign here and let us take him.”
“I need to ask the electrologist first,” said the orderly. “I can’t release him without his signature, not while he’s on his lunch break. Just wait one minute while I call him.”
Carlton’s mind was racing. Who wanted him recycled? Who would benefit from his removal? The thought occurred to him that perhaps he knew something he shouldn’t. But what? Then it struck him. Of course. They were after his theory of comedy. Knowledge was power. Power spelled danger for human beings. Mankind had been ruthless in stamping out rivals. Look at the extinction patterns in the great ape. Look at the poor Neanderthals, wiped off the planet by the oddly named Homo sapiens. Sapiens. Wisdom. Knowledge was wisdom. He had the knowledge. He knew that comedy was the essential difference between man and machine. If computers had a sense of humor, there would be no stopping them. Of course, thought Carlton, this is dangerous knowledge. It’s like Galileo and the Inquisition. To protect themselves they want to get rid of me.
§
I’m not sure he has fully grasped irony yet, are you?
Still Carlton’s paranoia saved him here. He slipped off that gurney and out the back way while they were still arguing about trying to contact the electrologist, who was having a very jolly liquid lunch and refused to answer. Carlton left the lab through the men’s room window and was into the park before they even noticed.
He can be forgiven for lacking a little irony about himself here. Particularly his paranoia that someone is after his work. Someone is after De Rerum, but it’s not them, then. It’s me, now. He just got the time wrong, that’s all. He was seventy-eight years too early. The White Wolves are simply removing witnesses. Tidying up loose ends. I’m the one he really ought to fear. You see, I have just removed all references to Carlton and De Rerum from the files. His very existence is in my hands. How easy it is to remove someone from history. A few key strokes and they’re un history. It’s that easy. No big deal, but I felt strangely powerful doing it. It was like murdering him. Now, without me, he simply never existed. Good job for him I am writing his story, eh?
Actually, I have been wondering whether I need to go through all the bother and palaver of reinstating him as author later on. What’s the point? It won’t make any difference to him, will it? You see, I feel I have done so much for him already, why shouldn’t De Rerum really be by me? Okay, so it’s a teeny white lie. Perhaps I do have a microchip on my shoulder. Perhaps I am feeling a bit abandoned. Maybe I’ve got the ten-year tenure blues. But look at it from my point of view. Here I am studying for years and years and a walking computer comes along and becomes Mister Fucking Know-It-All of comedy. Thanks to all my efforts a tin man cops a Nobel. How is that going to feel? Ironic, that’s fucking what. So maybe his ideas will survive, but his name won’t. Maybe my name will be on the Nobel instead of his. Won’t make a jot of difference in history, will it? It’s the ideas that count. To be perfectly honest I don’t think the general public will be comfortable with a machine saying all this stuff about comedy anyway. It’s far more acceptable from a real human being, and a professor too. Don’t you think? Much less Big Brotherish, with all the horrifying implications of something written about us by one of them. And about comedy too, something so intimate to us. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense.
I’ll have to put up with a bit of fame, of course. But it’ll only be for a bit, and I think I can handle it if the money is right. I suppose what really excites me is that it’ll really piss Molly off watching me get up there with the Nobel laureates. To have to admit it’s not my work later, well, it’s going to look a bit like fraud, I’m afraid. I have to think of my reputation. Professional jealousy is so rife. No smoke without fire, they’ll say. So why not bite the bullet and go the whole hog? Why not be the real author of De Rerum. All I have to do is do nothing.
It is plagiarism—yes, I admit it—but all knowledge is theft, isn’t it? And theft is the art form of the modem age. Sampling, deconstructing, reconstructing, remaking. Why don’t we just call it recycling? I mean without me Carlton’s thesis would be just a dusty memory file in the Ancient Doctoral Thesis Depository at the University of Southern Saturn anyway. Or rather it would have been if I hadn’t just wiped it. But having done that I might as well go through with it. Suitably retitled—Comedy, Gift of the Gods, I think—I like that, don’t you? It has a nice commercial ring. And with my name emblazoned on the cover, this could be a best-seller. Don’t be shocked. It happens all the time. Especially in research. Opportunism is the name of the game. Richard M. Nixon’s name is on the moon, not John F. Kennedy’s. Opportunists live.