In 1966 I was privileged to be one of the judges of a computer story contest sponsored by Data Processing magazine. The stories were all interesting, although most of them were unprofessionally written; some were very good, and as a group they presented a remarkably unanimous picture of the near future. (A computerized bureaucracy is going to run our lives, and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it.)

Doris Buck, is a prime exhibit in my gallery of writers who have never grown up. Although she is a grandmother, well into the age of discretion, she is one of the least bored people I know; she is alert, interested, full of enthusiasm. (And her husband, Richard S. Buck, who is in his seventies and has a white beard to prove it, is just the same.)

The author did not enter this story in the computer contest, although I urged her to (she said she would rather sell it to Orbit, bless her heart); but in my opinion it is better than any of the winners, as well as much funnier.

* * * *

Why They Mobbed The White House

by Doris Pitkin Buck

“Hubert was glad he lived in an age when they still had jet transport. The big tunnels got you across the continent faster, but the two-hour jet trip gave you a chance to enjoy the landscape. And Lila loved to hear his description of the Rockies that looked for the whole of their length like a shelf canted over toward the west. Hubert and Lila planned to vacation there sometime. He saved up his credits conscientiously. But Lila’s health had been unpredictable ever since Hubert had volunteered for the late East Asian War.

“Even when Hubert topped his Congressional Medal of Honor and won the Legion of Purity’s Silver Halo for being the only private in the entire Third Expeditionary Force never to have entered a hot spot in Singapore, Saigon, Shanghai or Tokyo, Lila still showed vague, distressing symptoms. When more decorations were showered on him, she’d take days off from the family record-keeping that had once been Hubert’s chore. She’d spend this free time writing ecstatic letters. The itches, the spots, the hive-like bumps, the vein distensions with their sub-aches let up temporarily. But once she was back at the usual secretarial-computation routine that had succeeded housework as the Number One domestic bane, she was as physically wretched as ever, even in her pride.

“Hubert, who worshiped her as Arthurian knights adored their ladies, put a great deal of thought on her problem. If she met him on his return from business trips, an opaque veil over her once pert nose and swollen coralline mouth, Hubert saddened. He had imagination. He realized what having to hide her face meant to Lila. He kissed her on the temple. Even with this Victorian salutation, Hubert would feel Lila catch her breath. It drew a little of the veil right into her mouth. They tried to laugh that off as something comic. But their eyes moistened with the tragedy of it.

“When Hubert reached his house after this business trip, Lila could not get out of bed. Her ankles were dropsical with edema. Far worse, her eyes were swollen shut. But this time her mouth was visible. Her rosy lips under her temporarily sightless eyes murmured, ‘Darling, do you know what day it is?’

“Hubert searched his prodigious memory for a forgotten anniversary. He knew perfectly well the day was April 7. But they’d been married in June. They were engaged on Valentine’s Day. They had both been born on September 9. It wasn’t Mother’s Day. It wasn’t Father’s Day. It wasn’t Remember-the-Grandparents Day. Nor Armistice Day. Nor Unknown Soldier’s Day. Nor Adopt-a-Veteran Day. Nor Corsage Day. Nor Let’s-Eat-Out Day. Nor National Safety Day. It was only April 7, which had the distinction of being no particular day.

“Hubert was at a loss. He fell back on a true and tried tactic. He said, ‘What have I done?’

“ ‘Nothing. I’ve failed you. Ever since you enlisted,’ she said, scratching, ‘I’ve made out our income tax. I work on it a little every week in the year.’ She scratched again. ‘But I’m still only on the seventy-third page. I’m lying here blind. And the returns are due on April 15.’

“ ‘Let it go,’ Hubert cried. ‘I can afford the penalty.’

“ ‘You’ve forgotten, Hubert. Oh!’ Lila refrained from scratching but the effort hurt. ‘Congress amended the penalty clause when you were overseas. It carries a jail sentence now. Optional with the IRS, but it is there.’

“ ‘Don’t worry. I’ll make it out the way I used to.’

“ ‘I’ll have to let you.’

“He kissed her—a beautiful and reverential kiss. A smile curved her mouth. She murmured, ‘I think I can open my eye a little way.’

* * * *

“Hubert took a week’s leave without pay from his office. He worked nineteen hours out of the twenty-four. At noon on April 15 every complexity in the forms had had full attention. The return was checked. Double-checked. Lila bloomed like a rose. For the first time Hubert could knock off and think of himself for a moment. His right ear had an ache that had crept up on him while he worked the desk computer.

“Lila was all sympathy. She gathered up the bills that proved their medical expenses were legitimately deductible. She filed these neatly with their financial records, with Hubert’s vouchers dealing with his expense account, with the canceled monthly checks to her indigent cousin who was classed as .7002 of a dependent. Then she tried what her sister Helen had used under curiously similar conditions. The trouble switched to his left ear.

“She tried remedies used by her friends. Finally a combination of honey, wine vinegar, and ground-up cardamon revived Hubert—somewhat. When Lila added hot olive oil to the mixture, his pain subsided to occasional twinges. When he took tranquilizers every hour on the hour around the clock, he became again his healthy, heroic self.

“But a mind like Hubert’s had not been idle. He made an old-fashioned door-to-door survey of the block with an old-fashioned pen and notebook. Everything was written since he could hardly hear. Then he tabulated results. He enlarged his field, tabulated again and came up with a startling hypothesis. Symptoms like his and Lila’s were subject to seasonal maxima—intensest in the first half of April. An income tax connection was the inescapable conclusion. Everyone was allergic to the income tax!

“He brought his study to the attention of doctors and scientists. He expected ridicule. But everywhere Hubert commanded respect. He postulated that the condition of half the population of the United States went from bad to worse during most of the year. Exceptions were sections of the country where it was customary for husbands and wives to work together on their tax forms. Symptoms in these places were less severe but more widespread. The Army, he found, was seriously concerned for fear not enough continuously healthy men could be found to put a force of any size in the field, if it should ever again be necessary.

“Hubert knew opportunity when he met it. With top personnel, civil and military, of the Defense Department supporting him, not to mention the AMA, he felt he could spearhead a movement to abolish Income Tax returns. Since he and Lila shared each other’s every thought, he hurried home to tell his wife.

“ ‘Hubert,’ she cried, exalted, ‘run for President with this as your platform.’

* * * *

“Hubert realized he was working for the whole nation. He enjoyed every minute of his campaign, for his heart was wide enough to stretch from sea to shining sea. His slogan was simple, ‘Down with ITA (Income Tax Allergy).’ His campaign speech was short: ‘Supercomputers check our returns, now let them prepare returns.’ He swept the sixty-seven states. The Thirtieth Constitutional Amendment, enacted by House and Senate with the speed of light and ratified in weeks, put Hubert in office on November 10. That let him begin immediately on the Great Repeal.

“In a few short weeks, the land blossomed with carefree minds in sound bodies. Every man, woman, and tax consultant with old records dumped statistics hugger-mugger into the hands of computer-tenders who fed them into giant machines. IBM trebled in size. Government demand for new computers was so overwhelming, it affected the entire economy. No one remembered anything like the computer boom except a few sesquicentenarians who recalled the heyday of the major automobile companies.

“The one cloudlet on the horizon was the occasional malfunctioning of a machine at some critical point. Not till half the output of the machines showed errors due to internal faults did anyone take notice. Soon horrible blotches appeared on answer tapes though nothing had been wrong when the paper was put in. Bonded connections gave way—and again investigation showed nothing amiss originally. Circuits got fouled up. Snafus multiplied. Manufacturers even went back to old models with a couple of hundred components long ago made obsolete by a single chip. But the condition failed to improve.

“ ‘Do you think,’ the President asked the First Lady, ‘that our machines are grow—’ He cleared his throat. ‘They couldn’t be developing allergies?’

“ ‘Oh no,’ she said in alarm.

“Four days after that the first machine in industrial history had its rustproof metal apparently rust out. One of those things that couldn’t be. But was.

“The President addressed a special joint session of Congress. ‘If our supersensitive, highly educated machines are suffering to the destruction point,’ he told the legislators, we must revise our policy. Men and women, even occasional children, will have to work on their income tax blanks.’

“One lone and unidentified voice interrupted, ‘Mr. President, don’t be absurd.’

“ ‘Of course I hope such a drastic measure will be unnecessary. I hardly believe in the possibility of a suffering machine. But if such a thing can be, if we are putting more on our machines than machines can bear, if we are treating intelligent entities as chattels, I hereby solemnly swear by the Constitution of the United States that I shall declare our computers wards of the Government. I shall do all in my power to protect them. I shall call on my country to protect them. I shall call for sacrifice.’

“The Senate tried to stifle its laughter. Members of the House openly hissed.

“No change came over the President’s dedicated face.

“The Speaker of the House said thickly, ‘Has anybody ever considered the welfare of a machine, Mr. President? Why should you?’

“ ‘Because my vision has grown to match my office,’ Hubert said simply.

* * * *

“The Machine Test was arranged on the South Balcony of the White House. A nation watched on its omniviz screens. It saw a megatruckload of data brought on and stacked beside the shrouded computer in the center. It saw the President and his wife come, escorted by double the usual number of security guards. Occasionally the screens of the omnivizes showed the crowds outside, the marchers, the placards with wisecracks, the placards with threats.

“Gradually a tense seriousness gripped the watching and sovereign state. Perhaps it was the President’s expression of high courage and deep gravity. Perhaps it was the slight trembling of Lila’s hands. They appeared for just a moment, monumental in their enlargement but not their repose. Everyone felt that once again the President was making history.

“Yet it was all very simple. The hidden computer had been equipped with a voice box. Inventors said it could not talk and express independent opinions. A few fanatics, including the President, disagreed.

“Then, dramatically, the Head of the FBI and the nation’s top-ranking electronics expert threw back the computer’s plastic hood. The machine gleamed with a beauty of its own. Data were read into it. The country, to its horror, saw the clean metal of the mechanical calculator start to spot with irregular patches: crimson, pea-green, mauve, chrome yellow. Their tints and sizes varied before the eyes of the audience.

“ ‘I feel awful,’ the computer moaned almost in a child’s voice. ‘Everything inside me itches. I want to scratch.’

“For a full half minute the entire U.S.A. held its breath. In the silence, four plaintive words came from the squawk box. ‘How do you scratch?’

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, that you have seen the site where the White House once stood, we take you to our next stop, the Lincoln Memorial.”