DANGEROUS QUARRY
BY JIM HARMON
One little village couldn't have
a monopoly on all the bad breaks
in the world. They did, though!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1962.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
They say automation makes jobs, especially if "they" are trying to keeptheir own job of selling automation machines. I know the Actuarvac madeone purple passion of a job for me, the unpleasantly fatal results ofwhich are still lingering with me.
Thad McCain, my boss at Manhattan-Universal Insurance, beamed overthe sprawling automatic brain's silver gauges and plastic toggles asproudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This willsimplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison."
"Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" Iasked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor.
"The Actuarvac poses no threat to your career. It will merely keep youfrom flying off on wild-goose chases. It will unvaryingly separate fromthe vast body of legitimate claims the phony ones they try to spike usfor. Then all that remains is for you to gather the accessory details,the evidence to jail our erring customers."
"Fine," I said. I didn't bother to inform him that that was all my jobhad ever been.
McCain shuffled his cards. They were cards for the machine, listing newindividual claims on company policies. Since the two-month-old machinewas literate and could read typewriting, the cards weren't coded orpunched. He read the top one. "Now this, for instance. No adjusterneed investigate this accident. The circumstances obviously are suchthat no false claim could be filed. Of course, the brain will makean unfailing analysis of all the factors involved and clear the claimautomatically and officially."
McCain threaded the single card into the slot for an example to me.He then flicked the switch and we stood there watching the monsterruminate thoughtfully. It finally rang a bell and spit the card back atManhattan-Universal's top junior vice-president.
He took it like a man.
"That's what the machine is for," he said philosophically. "To detecthuman error. Hmm. What kind of a shove do you get out of this?"
He handed me the rejected claim card. I took it, finding a new, neatlytyped notation on it. It said:
Investigate the Ozark village of Granite City.
"You want me to project it in a movie theater and see how it stands itall alone in the dark?" I asked.
"Just circle up the wagon train and see how the Indians fall," McCainsaid anxiously.
"It's too general. What does the nickel-brained machine mean byinvestigating a whole town? I don't know if it has crooked politics,a polygamy colony or a hideout for supposedly deported gangsters. Idon't care much either. It's not my business. How could a whole town befiling false life and accident claims?"
"Find that out," he said. "I trust the machine. There have been casesof mass collusion before. Until you get back, we are making no moresettlements with that settlement."
Research. To a writer that generally means legally permissibleplagiarism. For an insurance adjuster, it means earnest work.
Before I headed for the hills, or the Ozark Mountains, I walked a fewhundred feet down the hall and into the manual record files. The brainabstr