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
y 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 city line. The Mayor fired a disarmed war rocket as the signal to start.
And then the shovels, instead of biting into the dirt, turned at right angles and began to chew a path through the paid audience.