were of many kinds and not
always distinct. They sounded sincere and the words were plain, but I
could not discern any meaning in them.

* * * * *

For a while, until the Calamity affected wire communications, too, we
received telephone comments from our audience.

A few people complained about the confusion, but most asked us to turn
off the music and let the voices come through clearly.

One of the listeners said to us, "I haven't heard men speak their
minds so plainly since the morning Grandma wrecked Grandpa's new
helicopter."

4

My name is Wilson. I manned the remote control panel for the
Duplicator Construction Company.

As you know, we directed a battery of building machines which erected
mass housing projects. I directed only the destination of our
machines. Once I sent them to a site, they completed their work
automatically with the materials installed at our supply depot.

A single machine could prepare a site and erect a complete house in
one day. With an army of 5,000 machines, our firm had succeeded in
building as many houses as there was room for, and we had started on
the demolition of our original buildings for replacement with the
modern economy-size model. This made room for three families where one
had lived before. We started this replacement program the week before
the Calamity.

The first hint of trouble was a call from a checker to the front
office. I happened to be there when he appeared on the vid-screen and
said that one of our machines had built a Chinese pagoda. He seemed to
think it was funny.

Then we began to receive other reports. Our machines were building
grape arbors, covered bridges, cloisters, music halls, green houses,
dancing pavilions and hunting lodges.

One machine was not building at all, but had gone on a rampage,
clearing ground where we had just completed one thousand of the new
economy-size dwelling units.

The machine was dynamited by our emergency squad.

5

My name is Fisher. On the first day of the Calamity, I was a member of an
audience which had been employed by the Spectacle Commission to observe the
start of the Forty-Ton-Shovel-Cross-Continent-Ditch-Digging Contest.

This was the first time that power shovels of this size had been used
to dig a ditch more than a thousand miles long. I was very proud to be
in that audience.

The contest started on time. The shovels were marshaled and on their
marks at the ci