“Got it all cut yesterday,” he continued, when the robot had given him the packages. “Didn’t really finish it the way I wanted to; but when bulletin came, I just sent all your actor friends on home. I don’t work for nothing, I don’t. But I sat up and cut it into right length, and what do you know? It came out fine. Here.”
I distributed the packages equally among the three of us. “And does it contain that wonderful device you mentioned—The Old Switcheroo?”
“Contains nothing else but. As neat a switcheroo on an original plot as Hogan Shlestertrap has ever turned. Yop. It’s got all you need. You just notice the way I worked it and pretty soon you’ll be making stereos in competition with Hollywood. Which is more than I’ll be doing.”
“We do not even faintly aspire to such heights,” I told him humbly. “We will be sufficiently grateful for the gift of civilization.”
“Thass all right,” he waved a hand at us as he swayed. “Don’t thank me. Thank me. In those two stereos you have two of the finest love stories ever told, and done by the latest Hollywood methods from one of its greatest directors in his grandest—What I mean to say is, they told me to mission you some culture and I missioned you culture and if they don’t like it, they can—”
At this point, he crumpled suddenly into a huddle upon the chair. We waited patiently for any further disclosures, but, as he seemed preoccupied with a peculiarly human manifestation, we made our departures with no further formality.
Once safely away from the dome, I instructed my assistants to hurry to our two distant installations and prepare them for immediate projection of our new stereo.
“Remember,” I called after them. “Any change the First Stereo has made in our way of life will be as nothing to what will be done by The Old Switcheroo.”
And I was right. The introduction of The Old Switcheroo—
I saw it myself for the first time along with over a hundred other Plookhh upon our mountain. After it was over, I was as bereft of speech as the rest. After a long pause in which no one dared to comment, the nzred nzredd suggested I project the First Stereo again with The Old Switcheroo immediately following so that we could compare them more easily.