Memoirs of a Space Traveler

Then Senator MacFlacon’s Act went into effect. According to this law, an owner was not held responsible for the actions of his intelligent devices to the extent that such occurred without his knowledge or consent. Unfortunately, the law opened the way for numerous abuses. Owners entered into secret pacts with their washers or wringers, so that, when the machine committed a crime, the owner, hauled into court, got off by invoking the MacFlacon Act.

It became necessary to amend this law. The new MacFlacon-Glumbkin Act granted intelligent devices a limited legal status, chiefly as regarded culpability. It stipulated punishments in the form of five, ten, twenty-five, and fifty years of forced washing, or of floor polishing augmented by deprivation of oil, and there were physical punishments up to and including short-circuiting. But the implementation of this law also encountered obstacles. For example, the Humperlson case: the washer, when charged with the perpetration of numerous holdups, was taken apart by its owner, and the pile of wires and pipes was placed before the court. An amendment was then added to the law — known henceforth, as the MacFlacon-Glumbkin-Ramphorney Act — establishing that the making of any alteration in an electrobrain under investigation constituted a punishable offense.

Then the Ciaccopocorelli case. Ciaccopocorelli’s sink frequently dressed in its owner’s suits, proposed marriage to various women, and swindled them out of their money. When caught in flagrante by the police, the sink dismantled itself before the eyes of the astounded detectives, whereupon it lost all memory of the crime and therefore could not be punished. There followed the MacFlacon-Glumbkin-Ramphorney-Hemmling-Piaffki Act, according to which a brain that dismantled itself in order to avoid trial would be summarily scrapped.

This law, it seemed, would serve to deter any electrobrain from criminal activity, since such a machine, like any sentient being, possessed the instinct of self-preservation. It turned out, however, that accomplices of the criminal washers were buying their scrapped remains and rebuilding them. A proposal to add an antiresurrection clause to the MacFlacon Act, though approved by a congressional committee, was torpedoed by Senator Davis; shortly thereafter it was discovered that Senator Davis was a washer. It has been the custom, since then, to tap congressmen before each session; a two-and-a-half-pound mallet is traditionally used for this purpose.

The Murdstone case came next. Murdstone’s washer flagrantly tore his shirts, ruined radio reception throughout the neighborhood with static, propositioned old men and juveniles, telephoned various individuals and — impersonating its owner — extorted money from them; it invited the neighbors’ floor polishers and washers in to look at postage stamps but then performed immoral acts upon them; and in its spare time the machine indulged in vagrancy and panhandling. Brought before a court, it presented the testimony of a licensed electrical engineer, Edgar P. Dusenberry, which stated that the aforesaid washer was subject to periodic fits of insanity, as a result of which fits it was beginning to imagine that it was human. Experts summoned by the court confirmed this diagnosis, and Murdstone’s washer was acquitted. No sooner was the acquittal pronounced than it pulled out a Luger and with three shots took the life of the assistant prosecutor, who had called for the machine’s shortcircuiting. It was arrested but later released on bail. The court was faced with a predicament: the washer’s certified insanity precluded its indictment; nor could it be placed in an asylum, there being no institutions for mentally ill washers. The legal solution came only with the MacFlacon-Glumbkin-Ramphorney-Hemmling-Piaffki-Snow-Juarez Act, and it came in the nick of time, for the Murdstone casus was generating a tremendous public demand for electrobrains non compos mentis, and some companies had actually begun to produce intentionally deranged machines. At first there were two versions — the Sadomat and the Masomat. But Newton (who prospered phenomenally, having filled — as the most progressive of the manufacturers — 30 percent of his firm’s board of directors with washers, to serve in an advisory capacity at the general meeting of shareholders) turned out a universal machine, the Sadomastic. It was suited equally well for beating or for being beaten, and had an incendiary attachment for pyromaniacs and iron feet for fetishists. Rumors that he was preparing to turn out a special model, the Narcissimatic, were spread maliciously by the competition. The law now provided for the establishment of special asylums where perverted washers, floor polishers, and the like would be confined.