The Project Gutenberg EBook of All Day Wednesday, by Richard Olin

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: All Day Wednesday

Author: Richard Olin

Illustrator: George Schelling

Release Date: December 14, 2009 [EBook #30680]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALL DAY WEDNESDAY ***

Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction March 1963.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.

ALL DAY WEDNESDAY

Practically everybody would
agree that this is Utopia....

by RICHARD OLIN

ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE SCHELLING

* * * * *

Ernie turned the dial on his television. The station he had selected
brightened and the face of the set turned from dark to blue. Ernie
sipped his can of beer. He was alone in the room, and it was night.

The picture steadied and Jory looked out of the set at him. Jory's
face was tired. He looked bad.

"Hello, Ernie," Jory said.

Ernie turned the dial to the next station.

"Hello, Ernie," the face of Jory said.

At the next spot on the dial: "Hello, Ernie." The next: "Hello,
Ernie."

There were five stations that Ernie's set was able to receive. When
the fifth station said "Hello, Ernie," and Jory's tired face looked
out at him, Ernie shrugged, took another sip from his can of beer and
sat down to watch the set.

That happened Wednesday night. Wednesday morning began like this:

Ernie woke feeling bored. It seemed he was always bored these days. An
empty can of beer and a crumpled pack of cigarettes rested on top of
the dead television. All he did nights was watch TV.

Ernie sighed and thanked God that today was Wednesday. Tonight, when
he came home from work, he would be over the hump ... only two days
left and then the week end. Ernie didn't know for sure what he would
_do_ on his week end--go bow