True to Type
By Arthur T. Harris
A machine can be loyal—even to
a rascal. But writer Pascal Halmer
courted a monstrous retribution.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Fantastic Universe October 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
This story not only achieves a quite remarkable suspension of disbelief in the supernatural. It poses a fascinating problem. If you went to sleep over a typewriter and woke up with an idea as terrifying as this staring you in the face could you remain calm about it. Seemingly Arthur T. Harris could—and did. But then, he didn't have a typewriter like Pascal Halmer's.
Pascal Halmer had a superficial talent. And he was smart. You'd never find him rewriting a theme that had appeared, say five or ten years before, in a popular monthly. He was too smart for that. But Halmer would haunt the second-hand magazine stalls, and buy a pile of fiction publications published ten to twenty years ago. Then, back in his dingy furnished room, he'd uncork a bottle of cheap brandy, roll a smoke and settle back to read.
Presently he would chuckle, rip out the sheets he had read, and do some pencil work on them. Then he'd seat himself before me and begin typing the pilfered plot, twisting it about in such a fashion that plagiarism would be extremely difficult to prove.
He'd change the locale, the sequence of events, all the names, retaining only the plot gimmick, the essence of the story.