City

by Clifford D. Simak

Young Charlie was settling down for a twitch session. Dadburn the kid.

Twitch

“Ever’ blasted thing is automatic now.

Folks has got the notion that this new hydroponics stuff is the only garden sass that’s fit to eat.

May, 1946. Forty-four years ago.

“The city is an anachronism. It has outlived its usefulness.

It was decided, rightly or wrongly, that progress should come first, regardless of its effect upon the people.

No Dog today could build a robot because there is no need to build one, since the robots build themselves.

By simply twirling a dial one could talk face to face with anyone wished,

He wondered vaguely, whether agoraphobia could be fatal.

Eighty-six. That’s a hell of a long time for a man to live. Maybe too long.

But for speech and hands, we might be dogs and dogs be men.”

It was not easy, for a dog’s tongue and throat are not designed to speak. But surgery did it

Earth’s population had dwindled in the last two hundred years,

the ants the secret of the wheel, the secret of working metals—how

You’ll have to pretend that you are men.” “Us dogs,”

Maybe we are the morons of the universe.

Everyone would want to go to Jupiter and become a Loper.

If Man had taken a different path, might, he not, in time to come, have been as great as Dog?

“Maybe some day the wolves will be civilized,

For the five thousand could not carry on the work of the millions who had gone to Jupiter to enter upon a better life in alien bodies.

What is a bow and arrow? It is the beginning of the end.

history is hate—no

It was all wrong, Jenkins realized. He was attributing to ants the human mental process,